Gabriel
by White Angel of Auralon
Summary: An assassin goes around, killing off high profile targets everywhere. Nobody knows how he looks like. Nobody knows how he manages to overcome the best and oldest wards. One thing they do know is that he never fails. His name? Gabriel. / Dark story, not suited for children.
1. Chapter 1

**Hi everybody. This is a darker story, which is not suited for children. The M rating has its reason, as there might be slightly disturbing scenes and descriptions. There won't be a pairing for the main character. As always, all rights to Harry Potter belong to JKR and I only play in her sandbox.**

* * *

 **Gabriel**

He looked at the paper he had just been handed. A photo with a name and a sum of money under it. Dead or alive were the same. Good, that made the job easier.

"Do you accept the job, Gabriel?" His boss asked.

"Yes, sir. What is the timeframe?" he asked.

"One month. This one is tricky to get close to," his boss answered.

"Understood. You'll have proof within that period. Keep my money ready," Gabriel declared.

"I always do. You're simply the best we have," his boss stated calmly.

Gabriel nodded. His long black hair tied up in a ponytail falling down his back and his eyes hidden behind dark glasses.

"I'll be on my way to Britain within an hour. You'll hear from me," Gabriel said and left the room.

Once he was outside, a second person stepped out of the shadows.

"Is he really trustworthy, boss?" The woman asked.

"No, but Gabriel's service is buyable, if you can afford his prices. And once he has accepted a job, he is reliable. I know why you doubt him, he is very young for an assassin, at least his assumed age, you can never be too sure with assassins of that level, but he is the best in all of Europe. Nobody knows his true name and I wouldn't be too sure that he really looks the way I always see him during meetings. But this target demands somebody that can get into any place without causing suspicions," the boss informed her.

"And he takes every job that's paid highly enough?" She asked impressed.

"No, there is one rule you have to remember when you work with Gabriel. Never harm a child! He will turn against you in the blink of an eye. He doesn't care much about any other form of crime, but children are sacrosanct for him. As long as you adhere to that rule, he will do what he's paid for," he replied.

Both then went back to work.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore sat behind his desk, looking at how his plans had come together so far. Adrian Potter was back to being the public's darling after one year of slander from the Ministry and the Daily Prophet. Of course he had used the opportunity to make it clear how he was a hero and they should never have doubted his words. He was the Boy-Who-Lived after all. Well, if a little vanity and arrogance was all he needed to take for having the saviour of their world firmly on his side, he would do so. Adrian had developed a little big head after all his achievements over the years. While his plan to let the boy grow up with a muggle family, like his squib brother, hadn't worked out like he had wanted, the public was simply too demanding and, to keep his positions, he had needed to rethink his plans, in the end Adrian knew exactly that Albus Dumbledore was always right.

When Voldemort had killed James and Lily Potter, he had been the first on the scene. A quick check of the twin boys showed that Adrian, who had a lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead, was clearly the more powerful twin while Hadrian, more commonly called Harry, who had a few scraps that bled, had barely enough magic to be called a squib. A squib couldn't be the saviour of their world, therefore he didn't matter. He had dropped Harry off at an orphanage, it was much kinder to let the boy grow up a muggle without knowledge of the magical world instead of having to watch how his brother was a powerful wizard, something he would never be, and tried putting Adrian with his maternal aunt Petunia to keep him under powerful blood wards. Sadly, that didn't work out like planned and the wards wouldn't settle, so he had taken the boy back after three months.

He had obliviated Petunia and Vernon to cover Adrian's brief stay with them up. After that he had chosen one of his stout supporters, Geoffrey Richardson, to raise the boy. Geoffrey didn't have children of his own and his wife had been killed in a Death Eater raid. He was a low level worker at a plant nursery, therefore Adrian wouldn't get any ideas of grandeur. So far the plan. While he knew that Voldemort had killed his parents and couldn't kill him, he was only told when he had been nine how the public viewed him.

From then on he had been carefully shown to the public once a year on a function that Albus decided was worthy of Adrian's presence. Once the boy came to Hogwarts, he didn't really impress his teachers that much, but probably it was just a case of late blooming power or simple laziness, copied from Ron Weasley, his best friend. He did perform averagely. Thankfully Hermione Granger joined the two boys early on and kept them studying when the exams came around.

One thing that he wondered about was who was killing off high-ranking Death Eaters and Ministry officials. Since last July Severus had reported about an assassin that nobody could catch. There wasn't even an idea how he or she looked like, a pattern of killing methods or a pattern of targets. You only found a card left behind that informed the ones finding the body who had been the killer. The card showed two stylised angel wings with a sword crossing a flower. It had taken some time to connect a name to the card. Now the name of one of the Christian archangels was connected with a much darker being. Gabriel.

He didn't like the thought of somebody going after people that were high profile targets. His opinion was that he could reform them all, once Voldemort was finally gone forever. Then he would be the hero again, for mentoring the light that would lead the wizards into the future. After all, what better way to become immortal than becoming more famous than Merlin? Every great wizard in history had a disciple that he trained to stand against darkness. Merlin's had been King Arthur, Albus' would be Adrian.

* * *

Dolores Umbridge sat in her nice and cosy house. Thankfully she was away from those dreadful children. It was too bad that now the public was praising that little liar Adrian Potter again. As if he could have fought the Dark Lord to a standstill. Preposterous. Well, with a little time, the proper wizards would have full power in Britain. And she would help bringing that goal along. Who cared that the Dark Lord killed a number of mudbloods, half-breeds and blood traitors? She certainly didn't.

She had returned to her position at the Ministry and was now working under the new Minister Scrimgeour. He wasn't dear Cornelius, but she would be able to work around his ideas.

Suddenly she heard steps behind her. She stood up rapidly and found herself looking at a boy in his teens. The thing that drew her in most was that he was wearing a white trench coat over a combination of long black clothes, instead of proper wizarding robes. His hair was long and equally black as his clothes. His eyes were currently invisible behind shades.

"Who are you? What are you doing here? You're not permitted to be here! I'm the senior undersecretary to the Minister and I demand you to answer me!" She yelled at the boy.

She tried to hide her fear, as nobody that wasn't keyed into her wards should have been able to get through them. They were the best ones available at the market. Reserved for high-ranking, long-time Ministry workers like her.

"Dolores Umbridge, torturer of twenty-nine children at Hogwarts. Assistant of murder of one hundred and fifty-three werewolf children in Europe. Supporter of the Dark Lord Voldemort. Your time on this world is up and I have come to collect your soul," The boy stated calmly.

"I demand respect and that you stop that nonsense! I'm an important woman!" Umbridge screeched.

The boy took off his glasses and icy green eyes that bored into a person's soul now pierced her.

"I don't care about your delusions of grandeur and self-importance. You have heard the accusation and I'll judge you. The verdict is guilty on all charges. I'll also be your executioner. You shouldn't have targeted innocent children!" He said with a voice full of hatred.

Dolores then noticed the symbol on the right side of the trench coat on his chest. Two angel wings with a sword and a flower crossed in front of them.

"No, it can't be!" She stammered suddenly, "Gabriel."

"Correct," He confirmed and shot forward, grabbing her throat with his left hand before she could act.

A second later her wand was snapped in his right hand. She felt herself being pressed against the wall and then, within a few seconds, she was pinned to the wall with her arms spread out to the sides, her neck pinned by some manacle and her legs put together with a single manacle.

"You will serve as an example what happens to those that target children," Gabriel informed her.

"No, let me go!" Umbridge demanded.

Gabriel pulled out his wand and fired over her head. She didn't see what he did, but she feared it wasn't good in any way.

"Your favourite way of harming children was by making them bleed. So you will bleed until you die. You had the werewolf children die by drowning them like a dog that you thought too weak. You'll experience what it feels like to drown while you bleed out. Consider it justice for your sins. May god have mercy on your soul, because I certainly don't have any. Go to hell," He spat out and cast a spell before throwing a dozen knives at her at critical points that would make sure that she died, but would take time to kill her.

He took out a video camera and waited for fifteen minutes until she was finally dead. Then he put his card onto a table and went through the house to collect anything that he found interesting. People like her often had hard to find information on potential other targets and child abusers were robbed blind on principle. While he had been offered a million galleons to kill Umbridge already, this was a quirk he had. He always took information he could find and left the remainder of the target's possessions, except the job included taking a certain item with him to his employer for a job.

He knew that nobody would come to look for her until the next morning at the earliest, and by then he would long be gone. He put his shades back on and set to work. It was too easy when his targets overestimated their security precautions. As if it was hard to sneak into the archives of the Ministry and get the ward schemes. And, as he could see more business coming into his direction in the near future, he had also used the chance to get all schemes that were stored there. He wasn't one to waste an opportunity.

* * *

Gabriel took the card, which was the key to the vault at Gringotts that held his reward. The video was more than enough proof of the success of his job. He knew that his boss was a criminal. He didn't really care. People would say that he was a criminal as well. But what did those idiots know? They certainly didn't have to grow up like he did, fighting for himself because he had nobody else. And he had no trouble sleeping when he killed off the scum of the world. All the people he was tasked to kill had done things that were horrible, but couldn't be proven.

He didn't care about smugglers, petty thieves, people that murdered their opposition in crime, the occasional panderer or fraud. It was easy enough to work around those. And they normally didn't get onto the lists he was handed to kill off, but other, less talented assassins took those jobs. He was really expensive after all. But he detested child abusers and those that took pleasure in torturing others. He didn't normally leave as much of a mess as he did with Umbridge. But the client had asked for him to let Umbridge suffer the same way that her victims had suffered. And, as she was a child abuser, she had paid.

Gabriel was a curiosity in the guild of assassins. Most of the others would take any job that was paid high enough for their tastes or offered a challenge of a certain type. Gabriel refused certain jobs. On top of that he could only be contacted indirectly. You could leave a note with an offer in a special post box, for Britain that was in Knockturn Alley. It would be teleported to him and he would then arrange for a meeting or refuse the job. But even if he had only been working actively for a year, he was already acknowledged as the best in Europe. Nobody knew his origins, nobody knew where he lived, and nobody knew how he really looked like. They only knew his sign.

The way of payment was also unique to him. Gabriel only worked with this system. The goblins were notoriously neutral in the war between dark and light. And as long as they made profit, they couldn't care less that they didn't have complete identification of their vault holders. Not that the Gringotts goblins were the only ones working with him that way. Gabriel had a large number of accounts all over European banks. Muggle and wizard alike. It made money laundering so much easier knowing your way around both worlds. Especially if you had confounded the bank clerks into believing that you were a rising star in the business scene under numerous code names. So even if the police or the aurors would ever find out one of them, he had many others as a safety net.

The card had the advantage that he could easily hide it and normal wizards wouldn't realise what the card meant and how to use it. The card held the information for the goblins to transfer the million galleons to a vault that Gabriel would specify. The card only held the vault number of the one paying the money and the amount on it. Gabriel would hand in a note with the number of the vault he wanted the gold to go to and that would be all. And the wizarding world hadn't caught up on the ways of money laundering yet.

* * *

Patrick Greengrass was frantic with worry about his oldest daughter Daphne. She had been visiting her friend Tracy Davis and they had gone to see a fashion show of a famous Italian designer in Dublin. Both girls had vanished during the short time they had been in the bathroom and outside of the sight of their bodyguards that had made sure that nobody could get to them inside the bathroom. He knew that it was probably an act of revenge from Malfoy, who had tried to get him to sign a betrothal contract with his son Draco for Daphne. Patrick knew that Daphne detested Draco and had refused. Now he feared what horrors Daphne had to endure.

After two days he decided that he needed professional help, as the DMLE was absolutely useless. He had tried all family spells to locate his daughter and her friend already, but while he could tell the general area, the spells failed to give him details, which probably meant that they were under powerful wards and probably a fidelius charm. His wife and younger daughter were holed up at his manor, not leaving the house out of fear. The Ministry was just saying that they would do their best. It wouldn't be enough and not fast enough. He knew that very well. Therefore, two hours ago, he had made a decision. He had gone to the mail box that an acquaintance had once mentioned and left a request for Gabriel to help him.

While he knew that Gabriel was an assassin, he was sure that he would be capable to not only find his daughter, but also rescue her. He had been pacing in front of his fireplace in his office for half an hour already. The reply to the request normally arrived up to three hours after it was left.

"You really should update your wards," He heard behind him and turned around, only to find a black haired young man sitting relaxed in one of the armchairs of his office, "While the despair ward that imitates the effect of a dementor was a nice touch and a little challenge, your wards have so many holes that it's pretty easy to get inside unnoticed."

"Gabriel, I presume?" Patrick asked, trying to hide his being startled.

"Correct. Your job offer interested me and I need more information before I accept," Gabriel replied.

"Of course," Patrick answered hastily, "My daughter Daphne and her friend Tracy Davis were visiting a fashion show and I had send two bodyguards with them, as with the Dark Lord back, times are too unsafe to let them go out alone. I think Lucius Malfoy has something to do with this, as I refused his demand to sign a betrothal contract between Daphne and his son Draco. He threatened me that I would regret my actions. That was two months ago and before the sighting of the Dark Lord. I want my daughter back, as unharmed and as fast as possible."

It was clear to Gabriel that this was a truly desperate father.

"How old is your daughter?" Gabriel asked.

"Sixteen," Patrick answered.

"The price and job details besides saving her?" Gabriel continued his questions.

"I offer five hundred thousand galleons for her safe return and if you can kill Lucius Malfoy, if he's really the one behind it, I would double the offer. I leave anything else to your expertise, Gabriel," Patrick said harshly.

"I accept the job, Mr Greengrass. The payment has to be readied in a vault at Gringotts that is specifically set up for this one-time use. One for each part of the job. Once I deliver your daughter and proof of the demise of her kidnapper, no matter if it is Lucius Malfoy or somebody else, I expect to get a card from Gringotts with the vault number on it. Just ask the teller to open an angel account and they will understand," Gabriel informed him, "Now, please sign this contract, it's a binding magical contract that prevents you from giving up any information on me that you may find."

Patrick read over the contract that the young man had handed him. It was pretty basic and only included, but in a way that closed every single loophole he could think of, the secrecy of information about Gabriel. He signed with a blood quill and handed the contract back. Gabriel stood and left the house to get to work.

* * *

Daphne Greengrass knelt on the hard stone floor of the prison cell she had woken up inside first one and a half days or so ago. She had no idea where exactly she was, but she knew that she was all alone. Tracy hadn't been anywhere and she only occasionally heard footsteps in the distance. There was nothing inside this cell, except two chains on the walls that ended in the manacles that were closed around her wrists. The chains prevented that she could move a lot. In fact, they forced her into a really uncomfortable position. They weren't long enough to allow her to stand up or lie down, so with her arms by now numb from being held up, she really wished to get out of here.

Not to mention that she was really hungry. The only contact she had had at all was when a house elf in a really dirty pillow case had come, used a few cleaning spells on her and emptied the bucket of the remains of her using it as a toilet. Then she had been force fed a potion and the elf had left. That had been repeated three times so far. The elf wouldn't speak a word, just do its job and leave again. She only hoped that help would come soon. She didn't want to stay here. She didn't know why she had been kidnapped and who was behind it. But she knew that if this continued, her will wouldn't keep her up for too long. It was pretty pathetic how she, one of the most intimidating girls in Slytherin, one of the few to actually scare the Death Eater spawn enough to refrain from touching her, had fallen.

* * *

Tracy Davis moaned in delight when her lover showed her how good he was at making her enjoy their intimate meetings. She had been convinced to follow him into the service of the Dark Lord easily. After all, she knew as well as any student at Hogwarts that Adrian Potter, their supposed saviour, wasn't the big number he was made out to be. Since the Christmas break of her last school year she had been spying on other students and had given the information to her lover, who would then present it to the Dark Lord. He had told her that the Dark Lord was very happy with her engagement for the pureblood cause and would reward her once she fully entered his service as a Death Eater.

While she might have felt a small pang of guilt for delivering Daphne to Draco Malfoy, it was quickly overcome. Daphne shouldn't have opposed being the betrothed of a respected heir like she did. Marrying the Malfoy heir was a really good match for any pureblood witch. And it wasn't as if he was ugly like Crabbe or Goyle. He was good-looking, had a rich family and was ensured to have a successful career, thanks to his connections. She had been told that Daphne was right now taught a lesson down in her prison cell that her pride wasn't worth a thing against those that served the Dark Lord. Her thoughts about that left her when her lover sucked her right breast hard. It simply felt too good to think about anything but enjoying this properly.

* * *

Gabriel looked at the wards that surrounded the grounds. He had easily found his way here with a personal item of Daphne Greengrass, in this case the nightshirt she had worn last. Recent contact with an object made tracking a person down easier. He analysed the wards carefully. Thankfully it wasn't a fidelius charm. Those things were pesky and took days to pierce enough to slip through them. But the wards still gave him pause. He would have to be very careful to sneak inside the manor and get the girl out. His investigation of the crime scene had made one thing clear. The kidnapper was close to the girl and she hadn't expected to be attacked. There were no traces of a fight, only the faint magic of an old portkey.

And the one making it was an amateur, otherwise there wouldn't have been any magic left by now anymore. Well, it helped him a little. The wards weren't completely impenetrable for portkeys. There were anti-apparition wards that prevented people from apparating in or out, but nothing stopped you once you were inside the wards, as long as you didn't cross them while apparating. He found the classical anti-muggle wards with some nastier ones added on top of that to kill any muggle that came too close to the manor. Not legal those ones, but Gabriel guessed that with Lucius Malfoy being close to the moron minister Fudge in the past, he could get away with it. Next to the dozen or so barely legal wards that would make any attacker think twice of trying to force entry of course.

Now the tricky part was creating a hole in those wards just large enough to get through, but not too large to alarm the one that was connected to the wards, meaning Lucius Malfoy as the head of the house. But he was Gabriel and he could get anywhere he needed to. That was why he was feared. If he was after you, you weren't safe anywhere. He set to work in weakening each ward separately just enough to take hold of the magic and push it to the side just a little bit. He worked swiftly, but carefully. It was a good thing that the spot he had chosen to do this was surrounded by some bushes, which gave natural cover. The only other thing needed was simple air manipulation to imitate the effect of a mirage in the desert. The air would reflect what was around him and hide him from anybody looking at the spot.

He had needed two years to perfect that trick. But hey, he hadn't been schooled at that second rate shack that the Brits swore on, Hogwarts. His school had started him on using his magic when he had been seven years old and it was a hard time sometimes, but in the end, his work paid off. He had graduated two years before the others his age with the highest grades ever. After that he had apprenticed under Master Kwan. The best assassin in the world and bane of Asia. Not to mention the world's leading expert on Runic magic and anything related to Potions, be they the healing kind or the deadly kind. It had been harsh training, but he had prevailed and with just fifteen years of age he had been approved to work in the field, after one year of training. Well, normal time that was. Both his school as Master Kwan had access to time compressing training facilities. It made training so much more time-efficient.

Not to mention that, thanks to his apprenticeship under Master Kwan, he was also an acknowledged master in the subjects of Runes and Potions. There had to be an official cover for his studies after all. The governments would never allow somebody to officially be trained as an assassin. Even if many governments in Asia had regularly used Master Kwan's services against dark wizards that they couldn't get rid of while following the law. It was why assassins were known to the governments after all. Everybody knew that the British Unspeakables had their own group of assassins, but they had lost their edge about twenty years ago. Somehow their best had been killed off and the following Ministers hadn't truly made sure to replace them. Not to mention that weak-minded fool Dumbledore had argued against such practices.

* * *

After two hours of tweaking the wards he was done and had a hole through which he could get in and out unnoticed. It was invisible to anybody and the wards would signal their holder that they were still working perfectly. He slipped inside and walked up to the manor on the main path, still keeping the mirage technique up. Why go through any kind of hidden traps, if you could as well take the main path that was sure to be secure for anybody? After all, his technique prevented that the normal eye noticed him and any kind of magic detector that might be set up wouldn't go off this way.

It was one of Master Kwan's most important lessons. Don't overcomplicate things. Find a way around security measures and don't rely on magic to get everything done. The only time when you were allowed being flashy was when you had done your job. Like Gabriel did with leaving his cards. Hey, everybody needed some advertising. And nobody knew what he really looked like so far. Just as he was taught. An assassin didn't want to be recognised in public.

Gabriel only had to wait for twenty minutes before somebody left the building, opening the doors, which allowed him entry. He watched how the man held up his left arm at the gates and simply passed through. Gabriel concluded that the dark mark was keyed to the wards to let the Death Eaters in and out of the grounds unbothered. Silently he investigated the layout of the manor. It was a place that was clearly meant to show off the wealth of the owners and to make others look less important than them. Typical European pureblood supremacist behaviour. Gabriel easily got into all the rooms and eavesdropped into several conversations of Death Eaters and the Malfoy family.

It seemed that Mr Greengrass had been right. Draco was boasting to two other boys his age about showing Daphne Greengrass her place, once her pride was cut down to more manageable levels. She was somewhere in the basement of the manor in a prison cell with nothing but a bucket to relieve herself, chained to a wall. He thought it a great joke that Slytherin's Ice Queen was finally shown her place. Gabriel recorded the words for Mr Greengrass, as it would mean more money for him if Draco Malfoy also died. And from what he could see, it wouldn't be a great loss to society.

And this wasn't an innocent child anymore that didn't know better. Draco Malfoy clearly had the dark mark on his arm, which dropped him out of Gabriel's normal category of being spared punishment, even if you were a bastard. Under the age of fifteen that rule was absolute. Under seventeen, it depended on the character of the person.

Lucius Malfoy was mostly smug that he had shown up Mr Greengrass, who had thought he could refuse the Malfoys anything, when they had the backing of the Dark Lord and were in his favour. He was too busy with working behind the scenes at the Ministry to prepare the takeover of the Dark Lord, which had been delayed, thanks to the many assassinations of large financers of the Dark Lord's caused by Gabriel. Well, their bad if they got in the bad side of others that had the money to pay for his services.

* * *

It was eleven in the evening when the Malfoys had finally gone to bed. While their manor was used as the headquarters for the Death Eaters, they clearly forbid anybody from staying there at night. And, as everybody quickly followed Lucius' orders to leave at ten, it seemed to be normal. Well, if they were as far up in the ranks of the Death Eaters as it appeared to be, that wasn't too surprising. The grunts were low-level criminals with no manners mostly. Cannon fodder really. It was normal that an aristocrat like Malfoy wouldn't want them in his house more than necessary.

Gabriel waited till midnight, making sure that all the inhabitants of the house were fast asleep before he struck. He first took care of Draco Malfoy, the one that planned to use the Greengrass girl as his sex toy. His death was swift, but painful. Gabriel had hung him from the ceiling of his room, waking him up after silencing him to not call any elves or his parents onto the scene. One photo documented his work for proof needed to get his payment. After that he went to deal with Lucius Malfoy. It was made easier as it seemed that he and his wife didn't share a bedroom. Lucius died by a cut throat. Gabriel took some more pictures as proof of his success for Mr Greengrass and left the room after taking anything he wanted.

Storing things was never a problem for him. Master Kwan had shown him how to create an unlimited pocket space for his acquisitions. His was separated in two parts. One for his weapons that he didn't wear on his body, it was a real help in getting away from law enforcers if you didn't have weapons of the kind that were used in a murder on you, and one for documents and other things he took from his victims.

Once he was done with the rooms on the upper levels of the manor, now that he didn't have to hurry at all, as Mrs Malfoy seemed to have gone out today, he went down to the basement to rescue the girl. He didn't need long to find her. When he opened the cell, he could see that the Malfoys were real bastards. The girl was in a bad state. Not only was she dirty and exhausted, she had clearly suffered from having her arms tied up in the way they were and from kneeling on the hard stone floor. Well, the chains and manacles were no problem for him. He only needed two minutes for both manacles to open. Child's play for somebody like him. He would have been done in one minute if they didn't suppress magic like they did.

The girl woke up when her arms fell down and she looked at him from tired blue eyes.

"Be quiet. Your father sent me to get you out," Gabriel spoke softly.

He knew he had to avoid making the girl panic before he could get out of the grounds. A chase around the country wasn't part of his plans for the night. Thankfully she seemed to be smart enough and kept quiet. The one problem he had was that she couldn't put any weight on her legs. Well, if they put her into this cell the moment they had kidnapped her, she had been in that position for four days already. Not that uncommon to lose feeling in your legs.

"I'm going to carry you on my back. Don't move too much, I need to be able to use my hands in case somebody spots us, even if it shouldn't happen at this time. You can never be too careful," Gabriel told her.

She nodded weakly, clearly not in the condition to say much. He knew he would have to make sure that she didn't fall off.

They got out of the basement easily enough. There were no guards. Surprising really, as he would have at least posted some house elves to make sure everything was alright. Well, all the better for him. He managed to get to the hole he had made in the wards and went through with Daphne. He set her down again and cancelled his manipulations one by one, making sure that no alarm was triggered. Finally, the wards were as good as before and he told Daphne to hold onto him. She tightened her arms around his neck and he spun on the spot, vanishing silently.

* * *

Patrick Greengrass happily hugged his daughter to him, not caring that she wasn't in good condition. She was alive and assured him that except for her pride nothing had been injured. Then he turned to the spot where Gabriel was waiting, watching neutrally.

"Thank you for your help. I can't say how grateful I am that my daughter was returned to me unharmed," Mr Greengrass said.

"I just did the job you paid me for," Gabriel replied, "I have the proof of the secondary job and any information I could get on further plans for kidnapping your daughters in this envelope. I recommend going into hiding until it's safer again. Your manor wards are too easy to overcome with enough force. While very few have my abilities to get in anywhere, raw power against wards is hard to stop."

"I will take your advice, Gabriel. Here is the payment for the first part as agreed. I have a second card prepared if the proof confirms the second part," Mr Greengrass stated and Gabriel nodded.

It was just good reasoning to first check the proof of the job being done.

Gabriel had to wait for half an hour, as Mr Greengrass first made sure that Daphne was cared for and then looked over the proof Gabriel gave him for the death of Lucius and Draco Malfoy and the added information. He paled at the other plans against him and decided to follow Gabriel's suggestions as soon as he could. He handed Gabriel a second card and then the youth vanished without a sound. He had no idea if he was still there or already gone, but after having seen the young man in person, he would make sure to not get onto his target list.

* * *

 **Well, what do you think? This is my first attempt to write a darker kind of story, without going into too much depth of the horrors of the war.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hey everybody. I have to say, wow. 128 reviews in the two weeks since I put this story up. As I had the second chapter ready, I decided to update this instead of one of the other stories. Repeat warning, there are parts that are definitely M-rated, so not for children. Happy reading.**

* * *

 **Impersonator**

Albus Dumbledore listened to the report, or, more likely, rant, of his Potions Professor, Severus Snape, about the murder of Lucius and Draco Malfoy. Both had been killed by Gabriel in one night and their prisoner Daphne Greengrass had been freed from their basement. He had heard about the abduction of the girl of course, as he had spies among the aurors, but he hadn't pegged Patrick Greengrass as cold enough to involve an assassin to get his daughter back. This was the end of the Malfoy line in Britain, as Narcissa was only a Malfoy by marriage. Another wizarding line lost to Gabriel and his merciless killing.

So far there hadn't been any word about the second girl that had been kidnapped, Tracy Davis, but from Severus he also knew that she had been seduced by one of the younger members of the Death Eaters. The young man had been looking for an appropriate bride close to his age, but not too closely related to him, and the two had been introduced by Pansy Parkinson at one of her mother's parties at Parkinson Lodge. Voldemort so far had refrained from marking any witches not out of school, and history showed that he was more interested in having witches paired with his Death Eaters to have offspring than having them in his ranks. The only high-ranking female Death Eaters were Bellatrix Lestrange and Alecto Carrow.

They would have to wait and see if Davis returned to Hogwarts or stayed with her lover. He had asked if she was under a love potion, but the girl was actually smitten with the young man. Probably not too surprising. He was, according to Severus, one of the better looking Death Eaters and had a mildly impressive family fortune to show. For a girl from a minor pureblood family that had to fight to get by, as Endel Davis wasn't a powerful wizard and couldn't brownnose his way up, he was as close to a perfect match as she could get.

It was common knowledge for the teachers at Hogwarts that understood how Slytherin House worked, meaning Filius, Severus and him, in the past Horace Slughorn had also known and worked it to the best, that the young snakes worked to get the best possible position for their way in life. Every witch knew that the Ministry was prejudiced and it was really hard to ever climb through the ranks without a powerful patron sponsoring you. A wizard could work his way up, as seen with Percy Weasley, who had managed to brownnose and work his way through the ranks.

Percy had raw power, talent, smarts and the right amount of understanding how the world worked. Not to mention twelve OWLs and seven NEWTs to his name, which was really impressive and could offset the fact that his family was dirt poor and Arthur mocked for loving muggles so much. And those that really had power, needed people like that to keep things running. People that were content with taking the second row for a number of years to profit from the influence of the powerful person. Umbridge had got her position by sticking to Cornelius Fudge. Percy could get some power of his own, if he just continued what he did.

For Tracy, well, she would hope now that her lover survived the war, most probably she was hoping that he would get a high position under Voldemort's future rule, like many deluded and deceived girls, brainwashing of the parents not even mentioned, but if it didn't work out, she was in a bad spot. Without NEWTs, she would have many paths blocked to her. But the way things were in Slytherin, she had probably already resigned to become a trophy wife, she was pretty after all, and get a nice husband that also looked handsome.

Back to the main part of the rant / report. Snape was furious that somebody had killed his godson, but he also reported that, despite the vaults going into lockdown, the contents had been extremely decimated, according to Narcissa. She had been devastated by the death of her only son and therefore only looked at the gold left to her from her husband a week later. From what she found out, Gabriel seemed to have nicked the vault key, taken up Lucius' appearance before the news about his death broke and had visited Gringotts to withdraw about twenty million galleons. The intriguing thing was that the vault key had been in its normal place when she went to Gringotts.

It was new that Gabriel stole money from his victims' vault, but then again, he was known to rob the homes of those he seemed to truly detest of anything of value to him. If the Malfoys fell into that category, it wasn't too far-fetched that he would take a vault key and get as much gold as he could.

And honestly, Lucius was known to have a taste for young girls. Narcissa was just a trophy for Lucius. Bought when she was just fourteen from the Blacks, even if Arcturus and Orion had put some safeguards into the marriage contract that was set up between the houses Black and Malfoy, like Lucius not being allowed to ever be physically violent against her, using muggle or magical methods, or he would have to pay a huge fine to Narcissa directly and another one to the Blacks, but the contract allowed him to dictate Narcissa what she had to do. He treated her well and allowed her to continue her education until she had go her NEWTs, which he didn't have to do, but probably it was because of the benefits he had.

There were rooms inside Slytherin House that allowed couples that were in magical marriage contracts to live together. It was a remainder from older times when things like that were more common. Many a girl had become a sex toy for a wizard she was betrothed to, and the families didn't actually mind. The bride price was after all paid and if the girl got pregnant, well, it would just provide the needed heir much earlier. And Lucius had extensively used that privilege. It was only due to Madam Pomfrey having infallible contraceptive potions that each girl had to take once a month under her watch that so far they had prevented student pregnancies. They were a school and not a nursery.

Now that Narcissa wasn't as young as Lucius preferred his toys to be anymore, he had taken to kidnapping his victims, or just buying them from desperate families. There were enough poor families that would rather sell a young daughter to a rich wizard to have enough money to live comfortably for a while. Things weren't only bad for the muggleborns, even if they were the worst off, the families without a large fortune and without real estates to their name, didn't get by either. Knockturn Alley wasn't just a place where the scum of their world regularly came and went, it was also where those families lived and most used any way possible to earn a bit of money. Selling children into prostitution wasn't a new phenomenon after all.

And he would bet that Gabriel knew about this. The assassin knew too much for his comfort whenever he went after a target. It would certainly explain why he robbed the Malfoy vault like that. Voldemort was furious that his main financer was now dead and that, thanks to Gabriel stealing that much gold, Narcissa wouldn't be able to fund his plans anymore. Twenty million were about ninety per cent of the liquid value of the Malfoys. They had businesses that brought in lots of gold each year of course, otherwise Lucius wouldn't have been able to live the lifestyle he had, but the businesses normally did their deposits only once or, in rare cases, twice a year. And the deposit had been two months ago. That meant that Narcissa had to make do with the remaining gold until that time next year. Sure, she would easily manage, but it wouldn't be enough for anything besides that.

Patrick had also withdrawn both his daughters from Hogwarts, stating safety reasons, and had advised some of his friends to do the same. That wasn't good at all. If more students left, the school would get into financial trouble. Well, thankfully most believed the story that Voldemort only feared Albus Dumbledore and that Hogwarts was therefore the only truly safe place in Britain.

Severus was telling him how Voldemort had demanded the head of Gabriel, but nobody knew who he was, only the means to contact him. And nobody really dared setting up a trap for him after the way the last one trying that ended. Gabriel had made an example of the one setting the trap. Even after six months, the occupants of Knockturn Alley still whispered in fear, talking about the way that one of the top lieutenants of Greyback's pack had been staked on a silver spear in front of Borgin & Burke's with all of his fingers cut off, his eyes pierced with silver arrows and his face contorted in silent pain. And they had thought that the trap was infallible. They were taught better.

Nobody was stupid enough to tempt fate. No need to say that the crucio fireworks hadn't spared anybody in that meeting.

"I see, Severus. This is very problematic," Dumbledore commented, "And we have no handle on the problem at all. It isn't as if this Gabriel would want to work with us against Voldemort."

"We wouldn't be able to trust him at all, headmaster. That man is a monster. And now that he has proven that he can even get through wards as strong as the ones Lucius' home had, many will refuse to serve the Dark Lord out of fear. While they may fear him, they could be fearing Gabriel more. The Dark Lord is incredibly powerful, but he rarely attacks with that much stealth. He goes for the dramatic effect. Gabriel meanwhile is never seen if he doesn't want to be seen. He comes and goes like a shadow. Nobody is safe and at that is the difference to before. Nobody dared going after the Death Eaters like he does before. Law enforcement is powerless, but that assassin is a different thing. He doesn't care about laws, only profit," Snape stated.

Dumbledore knew that this was true. If only there was a way to get rid of Voldemort before all those lives were lost.

* * *

Gabriel sat in his armchair, his shoulder-long reddish brown hair drying from his recent shower, enjoying listening to music from his sound system. His mansion had the newest technology and he had to say that Dolby Surround systems were incredible. While he may have had magic, he liked living with all the luxuries that muggles had invented. Wizards in Britain were really stupid in their clinging to avoiding technology. And inventors had long since found ways to make magic and technology cooperate. Or in case the technology was too delicate, they created the core components from magical materials. Computer chips made of a rubidium alloy and some magical plants that allowed the magic to not affect the remaining components was standard in progressive countries like Japan and some parts of America.

He had bought the mansion from the payment of his first assassination. He had got five hundred thousand galleons for it and with one galleon being worth as much as fifty pounds, he had easily been able to afford the mansion being built to his ideas. The whole mansion had cost him ten million pounds. Not cheap, but more than worth it. It was equipped with an indoor and outdoor pool, a sauna, a training room, a large room that had a TV screen that made watching films similar to being in a cinema and many more niceties.

He regularly had some people his age over for parties, especially pretty girls. None of them knew who he really was of course, they thought he was the son of rich parents that travelled all over the world for their business and had set him up with the villa to go to school and be sure that he wouldn't be in danger. The golems charmed to look like bodyguards during the parties certainly supported the image he wanted to give. And it was easy to seduce simple-minded girls that were out to land a rich heir. He made sure to never invite the same people more than twice, and normally he moved to other properties to not give an easy target to track down.

Complacency normally meant death in his business. Other assassins or bounty hunters had experienced how it could end if you didn't set up more than two cover identities. The idiots that only had one never lived to a high age. But he was partial to this mansion, his first one. And so far he had managed to not have any of his true covers be connected to his Gabriel identity. By now, after having taken on a good number of profitable jobs, he owned five nice properties all over Europe. It was advantageous to have a place to retreat to that the cops, aurors or however the law enforcement officers were called in the respective country, didn't think to check. With how much he could charge for taking out high-profile targets, he didn't have to work a lot. One job every six months would normally be more than enough to live a good life. But he reasoned that if he assembled as many galleons and muggle currency as he could while he was still young and in his prime, he could later on retire from the job and only take up jobs that really interested him.

And of course he could use the masteries he had officially registered with the Chinese, Japanese, German, Spanish, American, Canadian and Brazilian Ministries of Magic. In a way being like Master Kwan. He didn't actively do the job anymore, he just trained hand-selected students, only one at a time, for four years on end, or shorter if the student couldn't take the brutal training. Time compression made it easy for him to get things done. His investments in profitable businesses did the rest for making him never want for anything. Gabriel regularly travelled to England, because there was simply a huge number of potential customers with them having a Dark Lord problem.

He had studied the history of the Dark Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters and it was easy to see that this was simply a self-made problem of this society that refused to accept change. Well, all the better business for him. It wasn't his job to make this society take the step to catch up with the rest of the world. His job was taking out high profile targets for large amounts of money. And he didn't mind if the target was muggle or wizard. And if his clients found out that some nifty spell work on the contract suddenly included anybody that had come in contact with him while he was doing a job for them and wasn't on the list to be killed, well, nobody had complained so far. He wasn't stupid enough to leave his back uncovered in any way. Mostly it was to prevent family of the client saying anything about his involvement.

In a way, whoever had left him on the doorstep of that orphanage when he had been a baby had caused that he grew up as he did. He knew that he had shown magic since he was two years old at least. The caretakers at the orphanage had been afraid of him, even if he didn't intentionally harm anybody. But bullies had used that to push the blame for their wrongdoings on him. The nameless orphan. He had hated that nobody knew his real name. He still hadn't found out. With no real clues it was hard. But he had decided early on to not keep the name they had given him. He didn't like being called Peter for some reason. And the surname of Smith, as the orphanage was called Smith's Children's Home, also didn't sit right with him.

The orphans had been forced to attend mess every Sunday, the orphanage was supported by the church after all, and the one being that he was impressed with early on was the angel. There were many angels named in the Bible. But the angel of judgement, the messenger, Gabriel, one of the arch angels, was the one he liked best. Which was why he had made his name his alias when he had passed his training under Master Kwan. He was sure that it was ironic that an assassin used an arch angel as inspiration for his name, but well, that happened when you never showed a child love. He knew disdain, fear, hate, mistrust, negligence and spite, but, at his orphanage, love was not given to him.

At his school the teachers would show that they liked his performance and encouraged his drive to excel, but he never could truly connect to anybody. But he learned to act like a normal boy early on. Which helped him keep his cover. He looked over the information he had from Britain. Voldemort was incredibly angry with him for killing Malfoy and stealing the gold from his vault. He was now on his wanted list. Well, he wouldn't be the first dark wizard that Gabriel ran afoul of. It came as a side-effect of his profession. And the low level criminals in Knockturn Alley wouldn't dare crossing him or helping set up a trap. The show with the werewolf had been more than enough to make a stand. And as his villa wasn't in England, he didn't have to fear any of those pathetic Death Eaters finding it.

* * *

Adrian Potter looked at the girl in front of him in annoyance. He had decided that he wanted to court her this year, so she should have been happy to accept his advances. He was after all the saviour of the wizarding world. But she stated she would go out with him when hell froze over. How did she dare? He would show her! She would feel the consequences of refusing Adrian Potter.

He stomped away from the spot where he had been turned down. He needed to find a good way for revenge. He never noticed a person in the shadows watching him. Said person could only shake his head at how pathetic the so-called saviour of the wizarding world was. No challenge at all. While Adrian Potter wasn't his current target, he could get close to it. And that was the reason why he was observing him.

Gabriel had been away from England for five months now and it was close to Christmas. During those months he hadn't got any jobs for Death Eaters, as they had been more or less silent to regroup and recover the financial hits he had dealt them. He had killed a mafia boss in Italy, taken out a group of vampires that led a prostitution ring with kidnapped orphans, most of them under fifteen, which pissed Gabriel off massively, and he had let a drug cartel boss be torn apart in the press. The job had been to completely destroy the man's name. It wasn't often that he did something like character assassination instead of simple assassination, but he was versatile. Some more millions had gone into his muggle bank accounts and he had bought shares of some promising businesses, like that shop in England that a pair of twins had wanted to found.

They had some great ideas and only lacked the funds to make their ideas a reality. By investing three thousand galleons under an alias, he was now a silent partner of the business and the twins were sending lots of profit back to his business vault each month. The shop had been recommended to him by an information dealer. He had contacts in every country that would at the one hand be able to provide information on his targets, but also about interesting business opportunities. Of course they were rarely the same ones. Good thing that he could appear in any form he liked.

Contact had been made by a low level thief that occasionally supplied the twins with ingredients for their products that were hard to come by because of legal restrictions. Gabriel had talked to the twins for two hours, had gone over their business plan, pointed out flaws, asked for strategies in certain situations, security in the current dark times and had been convinced by the duo that they truly knew what they did. He now owned a third of the shop. And some of the products sold there he even had a use for in his main occupation.

He pushed his thoughts back to Adrian Potter. The so-called Boy-Who-Lived wasn't remarkable at all. He had looked up his OWL grades and they had been at most average. Nowhere near what anybody would expect from a hero. His detention record also seemed to be well-filled for one thing or another. The question was why Dumbledore was sure that this boy would be the saviour and why he didn't give him more training. There were rumours about some prophecy in the Daily Prophet. He knew not to believe anything that British rag said, but if somebody knew what to look out for, you could gleam nuggets of truth from the rubbish they wrote.

Fact 1: Potter and a group of his friends had gone to the Ministry of Magic for some reason. It involved the Department of Mysteries.

Fact 2: Voldemort had battled against Dumbledore in the Atrium of the Ministry, which forced the idiot Fudge to acknowledge the truth and it elevated the public's view of Potter and Dumbledore again.

Fact 3: Voldemort wanted something from the Ministry and had set up an elaborate trap for Potter. It involved a prophecy.

The rest of the article was speculation. The conclusion that the prophecy had to do with both Potter and Voldemort was easy to reach. So now people fell back into the belief that Potter had to be their saviour. Gabriel had no doubt that the key was hidden in Dumbledore's knowledge. Which would mean a challenge to sneak into the old headmaster's office. But, for now, the headmaster didn't interest him. His target was somebody else. And if the blackened hand that Dumbledore was rumoured to have since the summer was any indication, he already had a death sentence hanging over his head anyway. No need to take any action.

* * *

Adrian had the suspicion that he was being watched. He had tried to find anybody following him though, and had never seen anybody. His friends thought he was becoming paranoid like Moody, but he was sure that somebody was there. And with how Voldemort was after him, it wasn't too far-fetched. After all, he, Adrian, was the only one that could defeat him. The prophecy said so. After all, how could Neville ever be capable of doing it? He had improved a little last year, when Adrian had taught the DA to rebel against Umbridge, but he wasn't Chosen One material.

He kept on guard, even when they reached Hogwarts. The stupid feeling never left him. He asked Hermione if there were spells that could find out the presence of a hidden person and she said that there was one, the _homenum revelio_ spell, but she hadn't managed to learn it so far. It was on her list of things to do. Adrian frowned. He had decided to learn a few more useful spells as well. If he had to face Voldemort again, he should at least be able to hold his own and not have to depend on others bailing him out. It was embarrassing that he couldn't take down the Death Eaters at the Ministry with his friends. He was the Boy-Who-Lived after all. He should have that power if he was to deal with Voldemort.

The feeling of being watched only left when they entered Gryffindor Tower. He relaxed a little, but he would bring it up the next time when he had his 'lessons' with Professor Dumbledore. Even if he really didn't see the sense in learning about Voldemort's past. It might have some little use, but honestly, he would rather learn to fight properly.

* * *

Gabriel grinned. So little Potter actually had some useful senses. This would make things a lot more entertaining. It had been really easy to enter the castle. Safest place in Britain, as if. He had simply needed to follow Potter's group of friends on the main path using his mirage technique to stay hidden. Nobody had noticed him and the squib that did the entry controls had never even suspected a thing. He had simply come in through the front door. No alarms were triggered. If he had been in charge of the wards, he would have given each student a rune mark on the arm that keyed them into the wards.

Anybody who didn't have one would be detained and transported to a holding cell that suppressed magic. After that he could have interrogated the prisoner to find out his intentions. After all, the Brits were at war with Voldemort. Having such basic security measures were standard at other schools all over the world. And it didn't interfere with the right of privacy of the students at all. When he had started school, he and his classmates had got their rune mark on the first day of school from the school nurse. The rune allowed them to come and go from the school, but it also alarmed the headmaster if a student left the school without permission. It doubled as a security measure that made kidnapping a student nearly impossible.

Weekend visits to the town or family had to be scheduled with the teacher that was in charge of your year. They couldn't refuse them as long as you had permission of your guardian. Gabriel had simply got a magical guardian among the staff, as he had been from a muggle orphanage. And his guardian just wanted to know where he was in case of an emergency. Otherwise he had given Gabriel the basic introductory lessons for the wizarding world, basic information on how to behave and a list of books that helped muggleborns to integrate into their new world.

Then he had been left to his own devices. He was given the same support all children at the school got, a little more observation than non-orphans though. Where the parents were responsible for things like vaccinations and out-of-school activities, his were delegated to his magical guardian. The orphanage basically lost any say in his life as soon as he was enrolled at the school. He stayed at school during the Christmas and Easter holidays and during the summer he was normally placed with one magical family or another that had agreed to take in magical orphans to not have them go back into the muggle system.

They were paid for it by the Ministry. It was simply better to pay for the upkeep of a child and know that accidental magic in front of muggles that didn't know about it than having to send out teams to obliviate the muggles. Less contact meant less potential for confrontations, meaning less work and less costs. Something that England hadn't realised yet. He had after all sneaked into the Ministry archives lots of times and had found out that many muggleborns with intolerant families were the main cause of overworked members of certain offices. The obliviators, though older wizards that didn't manage to blend into the real world were a major contributor to their stress, the accidental magical reversal squad, the underage magic restriction office and so on.

But this country's ministry didn't actually want to have to help the muggleborns. They were too prideful and arrogant to realise that their attitude cost them more than it gained them.

Gabriel continued to walk through the corridors of the school, occasionally staying still to let a group or a single student pass his position unnoticed. Patience was a core ability an assassin like him needed to have. He was doing this to get a mental map of the castle. He needed to know where he could sleep, where he could hide and where to find information he needed. Within two hours he had a basic idea of the layout, some core characters and resources available to him. Sure, he had his storage space, but anything he could get from the school would be a help. He didn't know after all how long it would take to get the job done. This target had proven tricky to hit in the past.

* * *

Gabriel sat in class with the sixth-year Gryffindors and Ravenclaws. He had taken over the position of one of the loners in Ravenclaw and was finding out lots of important pieces of information this way. After all, nobody would think it strange that a student would walk around all over the castle, especially a loner. The student in question would only be woken up from his potion-induced sleep once Gabriel was done with his job. It should only take two more days until he had a good opportunity to strike.

He had to suppress a laugh at the level that these students were working. This was supposed to be the NEWT class and still, he had learned all this when he had been eleven, together with the others at his school. The speed with which topics were covered was also pathetically slow. Still, he could see that a lot of the so-called superior purebloods had trouble following the course material. Really, Britain was going to the dogs with its pureblood philosophies and inbreeding. Urgh, alone the thought of having sex with a close cousin. He had to suppress a shudder.

And the so-called saviour was also nothing to be impressed with. He struggled to get easy concepts. Really, to not be able to use non-verbal spells when you were already sixteen was laughable. Wandless, okay, he would admit that it was only the teaching of his old school that enabled him to learn that properly, not to mention the fine tuning that Master Kwan had pushed him through, but non-verbal had been part of any class he had since the second year. First year was to get used to channelling your magic at all, with the wand being a helpful tool to get the feeling for things. As speaking the incantations made concentration easier, it was still done, but from second year on, they had first learned a spell verbal, then non-verbal. And they needed to work on it in their own time if they didn't manage in class. They hadn't covered too many spells in that year, as the principles were more important to understand.

Third and fourth year had a higher pace of learning spells, as they by then knew how to transfer the ability to use a spell verbally to doing it non-verbally. And it continued that way until graduation, when you were required to use your magic without a wand and silently. His early graduation only showed his great talent in harmonising with his magic. That, and nothing else, was the reason he was as good as he was. Harmony with his magic. Kind of ironic that the best assassin in Europe was in harmony with his magic. Uneducated people would assume that anybody murdering others couldn't be like that. Well, they were ignorant.

When Professor McGonagall ended her class, he stood and followed the other students into the Great Hall for lunch. The British food wasn't really to his liking, but, to blend in, he ate a bit. He excused himself early to go and read up on the next class and nobody thought anything about it. It was the normal behaviour of the boy he was impersonating.

* * *

Finally, his target was alone and he could strike. It had taken him a lot of observation to pin down the time where she wasn't in company of her friends. He stunned her in the back and disillusioned her to carry her into the classroom he had prepared. It was truly strange how nobody had noticed the switch. Well, not his problem. He put the girl on a chair and tied her up with unbreakable wire. He also dispelled the glamour charm on the wand she had to make it appear as if it looked like the wand of the girl she was pretending to be. Badly at that, as he had to say.

Finally, when all preparations were done, he cast an 'enervate' spell on her. She woke up and looked around frantically.

"What the hell is going on?" she demanded to know.

"Welcome back to the waking world, Miss Hermione Granger, or should I use your true name, Miss Iridia Lestrange?" Gabriel asked.

"What are you talking about? I'm Hermione Granger!" She insisted.

"Please don't insult my investigative abilities, Miss Lestrange. You took over the position of Hermione Granger this summer before she returned to Hogwarts. The only thing you needed to do was pass up a moment when she wasn't around her friends. I think while she was shopping in Diagon Alley and decided to follow Draco Malfoy while he went to Knockturn Alley. She was alone and an easy target. You're using a Black family heirloom that was part of your mother's dowry when she married Rudolphus Lestrange. A hair of the one you want to imitate was enough to activate it correctly. It's known in certain circles that Bellatrix Black was the Dark Lord's secret assassin during his first rise to power.

"You were tasked by Voldemort to infiltrate the inner circle of friends of Adrian Potter and find a way to assassinate Albus Dumbledore. To not break your cover, you staged a fit of jealousy against Potter over a Potions book that had better instructions than the normal one, even if the true Hermione Granger would have been ecstatic to get this information into her hands. You pretended to be interested in Ron Weasley to not have to be too close to Potter, as he was more perceptive than Weasley. But still, you made sure, via amortentia in Lavender Brown's supply of fizzy drinks in your dorm room, that she would fall for Weasley, so that you wouldn't have had to truly be close to him. Any kind of strange behaviour would have been cast off as teenage hormones," Gabriel pointed out.

"The one originally planned for this task was Draco Malfoy, but as I killed him in August for the kidnapping of Daphne Greengrass, he sadly wasn't available. Therefore, your mother asked Voldemort to bestow the honour of killing the headmaster onto you, her only child. And had it not been for the job I got to take you out, you might have even succeeded."

"Gabriel!" She exclaimed shocked.

"Indeed," He confirmed.

"You'll never get away with this," she spat.

"Oh, but I will. You see, the only thing I haven't been able to find out yet is what happened with the real Hermione Granger, which you can tell me," he said and pulled a small vial with a clear fluid out of his pocket, "Once I know what happened and if she's still alive, I can simply kill you and let you be found in the evening. Nobody will look for you before then. And by then I'll have left already. It's too bad that Lucius Malfoy can't profit from this little breach of Hogwarts's security anymore. Imagine. The infamous assassin Gabriel managed to kill a student directly under the great Albus Dumbledore's nose. Skeeter would have a field day."

He forced the girl's mouth open and fed her three drops of veritaserum. Soon she had the dazed look that the potion caused. He set up a dicta quill and started.

"Let's start. For the records, what's your name?"

"Iridia Bellatrix Lestrange."

"Why were you impersonating Hermione Granger?"

"To fulfil the mission the Dark Lord entrusted me with."

"Which mission was that?"

"To kill Albus Dumbledore and lure Adrian Potter to the Dark Lord's hideout, so that he could kill him there."

"Why is Voldemort after Potter?"

"A prophecy."

"Do you know the wording?"

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…born to those who have thrice defied him…born as the seventh month dies…" she recited, "That's the first part that is known to the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters, the second part wasn't heard by the Dark Lord's spy as he was discovered."

"What happened to Hermione Granger?"

"She's serving as a prostitute for the Death Eaters at our manor, which is all a mudblood like her is good for."

"What wards are on your manor?"

"Anti muggle, Black family death wards, anti-apparition except for family, anti-portkey, intruder detection, wards that only allow those with a dark mark entry outside of family, pit traps that are activated if you trigger the inner ward and a magic draining ward that activates if you don't have a special pendent."

"What kind of pendent?"

"An enchanted snake pendent. All low level followers of the Dark Lord have to wear it."

"Where is Voldemort hiding?"

"The Dark Lord has a secret manor where he stays, but he regularly spends time at our manor with mother."

"Which Death Eaters are working for Voldemort?"

Iridia named all the ones she knew of.

"Who is your father?" Gabriel asked on a hunch.

"Barty Crouch junior."

"Why not Rudolphus Lestrange?"

"He's infertile and chose Barty to father a child with mother to have an heir to the Lestrange fortune. It only mattered that it was a pureblood that followed the Dark Lord. Thanks to a blood adoption potion, I'm the Lestrange heiress as well as the Crouch heiress."

Gabriel asked a few more questions and then made her drink poison. Hogwarts may have wards that detected dark magic, but it didn't have anything stopping poison. The girl would be dead in two minutes. He made a photo to prove his success and then left the room and made his way out of the school.

* * *

Gabriel managed to get into Lestrange Manor easily. Thanks to knowing exactly which wards they used, as these ones hadn't been among those found in the Ministry archives, he could slip through the small hole he created. He had ambushed a grunt that worked for Voldemort in Knockturn Alley an hour ago to get the pendent that he needed to get through the wards. News about the death of Iridia Lestrange would soon spread and he wanted to prevent that his second job failed because her mother was in revenge mood. Like always he looked around for important and valuable information and some precious items that he would either keep or sell on the Black Market.

He quickly found a hiding spot from where he could observe where people were going. Watching the way people behaved in a supposedly safe location gave you incredible information about things. For example, he could deduct from the sadistic grin on Rastaban Lestrange's face and the way he walked where the rooms with their prisoners were. His comments about teaching the mudbloods a lesson only added to it. Gabriel silently slipped into the direction from which he had seen Lestrange come and found a corridor that was guarded by two men. The corridor had only one exit and there were no windows on the sides, only five doors on each side.

He quickly took cover behind a curtain when he heard heavy steps coming closer to his position from behind. He recognised the identified Death Eater Walden Macnair. He had worked as an executioner for dangerous beasts for the Ministry until Fudge had been forced to accept that Potter had told the truth and also that the names of the ones being at the graveyard where Voldemort's resurrection had taken place were truly Death Eaters.

"Ah, back for more, Macnair?" One of the guards asked grinning.

"You know me, Flint. Can't pass up the chance to show those mudbloods what their only use in our society is. And how else would I be able to satisfy my needs as a man while my wife is pregnant with our first child?" He asked.

"So true. And those girls don't deserve any better either. Being our whores is the best they can hope for," Flint replied nodding.

"Heard you were going to get rid of one of them soon?" Macnair asked.

"Yeah, Bellatrix Lestrange has given us a deadline for the Granger girl. She's sure that her daughter will finish her mission soon and that we won't have much use for her anymore. A shame, she's such a nice screamer when you do her," Flint commented.

"Then I should probably use the time we have left," Macnair grinned, "Is she free?"

"Let me see," Flint said taking out a list, "Hm, she got done with Travers an hour ago. Well, it's not as if we need to give them time to recover. They're only mudbloods anyway. Go ahead, you know the way."

"Thanks, Flint," Macnair said and passed the two guards.

Gabriel used his mirage technique to follow, making sure that his feet hit the ground the exact same moment that Macnair's did so to muffle any possible sound.

Macnair only had to hold his dark mark in front of a violet spot on the door and the door slid to the side. Macnair and his unnoticed follower entered the room. The door slid back and it was clear that only another dark mark, or probably the pendent, would be able to open it again.

Macnair grinned lecherously seeing the girl curled up on the bed, completely naked. She wasn't anything more than a whore, and the irony of breaking the once proud mudblood that had thought she could get away with living over her station, just because that brat Adrian Potter had decided to befriend her. When he was about to pull down his trousers, he only felt a sharp pain in his neck and then everything went black.

Gabriel frowned seeing the sorry picture in front of him. The young woman had been horribly abused and raped several times since she had been taken here. He pulled out a soft blanket from his storage space and walked over to the bed. He softly wrapped the blanket around the woman, who flinched away from his touch.

"Don't talk, I'm here to get you out," Gabriel whispered softly.

"Why?" She asked without hope, "They'll catch me again anyway."

"No, you'll be out of the country before they notice that you're missing," Gabriel contradicted her.

"How?" She asked.

Gabriel took it as a good sign that she at least still asked questions.

"Your grandfather paid me to get you to a small private airport so that he can take you out of the country," He answered, "Now listen well, we only have one chance to do this properly. You're going to be completely still and quiet when I leave the room with you. I'm going to use an illusion to look like that pig Macnair after he had his way with you. I'm going to stick you to my back, as I need my hands free. You will also be under a silencing charm, but those tend to break under stress, so please keep as quiet as you can as well. We don't have too long to get out, as the death of your double at Hogwarts will be noticed soon. And then hell will break loose."

"Granddad sent you?" She asked hopefully for the first time.

"Yes, you're going to be out of this war soon. He won't stand for the nonsense that Dumbledore calls leading a war. Especially not if you and others like you are the ones paying the price for the pacifistic crap that is the mentality of the 'Light Side'," Gabriel scoffed.

"They're going to pay?" Hermione asked.

"Certainly," Gabriel answered.

"Good, they deserve it. Can we save the other girls here?" She asked.

"No, we don't have the time and means to do that. Getting in and out while taking one prisoner is fairly easy for me, but I'm not good enough to fight against a large number of opponents while having to protect a group of defenceless civilians. I know my limits," Gabriel stated calmly.

Hermione seemed to ring with herself and then nodded defeated. She had realised that his words were true. Gabriel handed Hermione some of his spare clothes to dress a bit and let her treat her injuries as much as possible. They had to pass some time until it was believable that Macnair would be done with his victim. Thankfully Hermione didn't seem too grossed out at the unconscious body of the Death Eater lying next to the door. Gabriel walked over and took out a vial with a potion. Hermione seemed to recognise it.

"Polyjuice?" She asked surprised.

"We need time to get away. He'll be a decoy to cover that you're gone for two hours. After that he'll simply die. The polyjuice is rigged to turn lethal once it stops working after an hour," He answered.

"How can you talk about something like that so casually?" She wanted to know.

"It's my job," he said and took out a card with his sign and pinned it to the wall next to the door.

She seemed to recognise the sign as she looked at him open-mouthed.

"I thought you only did assassinations," she stammered.

"I'm versatile," he shrugged and looked at his wrist watch, "Time to go."

He poured the potions down Macnair's throat and massaged it to make the man swallow. Then he put a nice little charm on him to prevent him from talking. Maybe another Death Eater would decide to have some fun before the potion wore off in two hours. He had managed to improve the original formula and got a longer time of the potion working from it. Then he placed Macnair, who now looked like Hermione Granger, on the bed and transfigured his clothes into some small underwear. A good job, he had to compliment himself. He then let Hermione climb onto his back and secured her with a charm to prevent that she shifted positions, even if he had to move quickly. He held the pendent against the violet spot and left the room, already looking like Macnair, who had just had an enjoyable time.

"Already done, Macnair?" Flint asked.

"She didn't have much fight in her. I like it better when I can break them. So I just relieved myself," Gabriel stated with a perfect imitation of Macnair's voice.

"Ah, I see, are you going to be around?" Flint asked.

"I have some errands to run right now, so probably I'll be back tomorrow. Perhaps then I'll come at my costs," Gabriel replied.

"Well, till then," Flint said bored and turned back to playing the magical variant of Battleships.

Gabriel left the manor without haste. He was after all impersonating somebody that had every right to be here. He could feel his passenger tense on his back whenever one of the Death Eaters crossed their path. But he kept up his acting and managed to leave the manor without interruption. He left through the small hole he had left in the wards before returning them to their previous state. Then he apparated away to the meeting point, of course taking care to do a few stops in between to confuse possible trackers. It never paid off to be sloppy.

* * *

Hermione cried her eyes out when she was held in the arms of her grandmother. All the fear and pain of her captivity were crashing down on her now. Her grandfather looked both relieved at her return and furious that she had had to go through something like that without anybody ever realising what had happened. He only found out because he had looked over the letters that Hermione had written to her parents. And he didn't like at all that they didn't find anything suspicious with the way the letters had changed or how their daughter was seemingly having a total character change. The handwriting had been copied perfectly, but that had to be easy with magic.

"Thank you for bringing her back alive, Gabriel," Mr Granger said soberly to the young assassin.

"I just did the job you paid me for, sir," Gabriel replied.

"I know, but I'm still very grateful. Hermione is my only grandchild and losing her would have been devastating. I know that it will be a long road to recovery for her, but we're going to support her where we can," Mr Granger said firmly.

Gabriel thought about something, then he wrote something down on a piece of paper.

"I don't know if they'll be able to help her get over this completely, but you can try and speak to the mind healers at this hospital in Canada. They're some of the best in the world. They're expensive, but if you can pay my prices, you can easily afford theirs," Gabriel told him and handed him the paper.

"Thank you, I really appreciate it. Are you going to get truly involved in the war, Gabriel?" Mr Granger asked.

"Not if I can avoid it. Currently it's just good business for me to take out those Death Eaters that manage to get so far on the bad side of an influential person that they set me on them. I know though that Voldemort won't stop before he gets me. Well, he has to first find me. And I can only be found when I want to be found," Gabriel stated confidently.

Mr Granger nodded and then took his wife and granddaughter with him into the small private plane that would take them away from Britain and its magical civil war. Gabriel left the place, simply vanishing from the spot he had stood on a mere second before.


	3. Chapter 3

**Bounties**

Albus Dumbledore wasn't in a good mood. Somebody had been killed inside of Hogwarts. A girl that had replaced Hermione Granger with a task, probably given by Voldemort. He didn't know anything about her, he only noticed a distinct similarity with Bellatrix Lestrange. But he hadn't heard about her having a daughter. And why had nobody noticed that Hermione Granger was missing? He had called her closest friends, Ron Weasley and Adrian Potter, in to question them, but they had been as shocked as he had been when the Fat Friar had alarmed him to the death. None of them had thought anything about the changes in the girl's behaviour over the year and he had to admit, he hadn't paid any close attention to her. Teenage angst, which Minerva had said she thought the girl was going through, wasn't anything of importance for him.

The only student that truly interested him was Adrian and Severus kept an eye on the more violent Slytherins that could try something. But this could have ended really badly. He would never have been on guard against a Gryffindor girl that was firmly put into the category of loyal follower. The one thing that made this already bad situation worse was that there had been one of those horrible cards of the assassin Gabriel. How could that devil have managed to enter his school? He had increased the security and there was no clue to how he had even managed to get the girl alone. The castle had been searched thoroughly, but except for finding one of Filius' sixth year Ravenclaws put under a strong sleeping draught, there was nothing.

Severus had determined that the boy had been dosed about five days ago and had been given nutrient potions every day and wasn't harmed in any way. He had only slept through those days and would have to catch up with his classes. Not that difficult.

A major problem was that the Ministry had to be informed about the death and they were trying to interfere with the school again. And he had just managed to stop that notion, pointing out the major mess that Fudge had made of things when he had sent his senior undersecretary to the school to snoop around. The students had lost another year of proper Defence classes because the former Minister had been paranoid enough to believe that Dumbledore was creating his own army inside the school. All the members of the Wizengamot that had previously voted for the higher control and had let the educational decrees pass without any concern to the students and how the teachers had to deal with them were cowed into silence when he had presented the gruesome results of that one year.

Not only on an educational level, but also on a physical and mental level for the students. Blood quills, total observation of their mail, control over what they did in their free time and giving problematic students, those that were known to have shown disregard to other students' well-being in the past, power over punishment and point deduction. And as nearly everybody on the Wizengamot had gone through Hogwarts at one point in time, they knew how important the House Cup was for all students. To have Slytherin house, as nearly all the members of the Inquisitorial Squad were from there, do what they wanted in the points race, definitely through the whole idea behind the House Cup out of the window.

Nobody had dared to question how he led his school again after that, but this one death of a young woman that wasn't even a student, but had managed to take the place of one, especially without any wards rising the alarm, would not be good for his plans. He might have found an explanation, or hushed up the incident altogether, but the news had got out too quickly. And his time was already limited. He needed to give Adrian all the clues to the larger riddle. He was the one that had to find the horcruxes and destroy them. The prophecy demanded it. If only he was more assured that the wizarding world would be in good hands if he left it to Adrian.

* * *

Gabriel sat in his favourite armchair and enjoyed a glass of French wine. He had been introduced to all kinds of alcoholic beverage in his training and, as he concentrated his work on Europe, he had a good understanding of fine brands of alcohol. Be they wine or harder drinks like whiskey. He could hold his alcohol and was quite proud about his high tolerance. It was imperative for him to not be made drunk. People would use the opening to kill him. Being an assassin was a dangerous business. Right now he looked over the letter he had got two hours ago from his mail box in Knockturn Alley.

It was April and his investigations had told him that Dumbledore had only barely managed to survive the shit storm that he had caused with killing Iridia Lestrange. A downside, for the Ministry, was that Bellatrix Lestrange had gone on a rampage in her fury that her daughter had been killed before she could fulfil her mission. It seemed to Gabriel that she was more concerned about the mission for Voldemort than the death of her only child. What a bad mother. Over the whole scandal, Rufus Scrimgeour, the current Minister of Magic for Great Britain, who had succeeded Cornelius Fudge, had decided that it was time to face the problem with the Death Eaters actively.

The point that interested Gabriel was that there were very tempting bounties on the heads of the Death Eaters that were known, as well as Voldemort himself. Dead or alive. It was practically perfect for somebody like him. The only proof required to get the prize on their heads was handing over the captive or corpse either at the Ministry or at Gringotts. The person had to have a dark mark in cases of unidentified Death Eaters, which also made the bounty smaller. But it seemed that Scrimgeour finally had enough after the rampage of Lestrange. He had declared any Death Eater outlawed and if you managed to bring in Voldemort, you got enough gold to never have to work another day in your life. It was sorely tempting.

Any bounty hunter that took up the challenge was also granted a general amnesty for any crime committed in the past and during the hunt for the Death Eaters. That could come in handy. He finished his wine and stood from his armchair. Perhaps it was time to watch the copies of the memories that he had made in Dumbledore's office again. They told him how Voldemort had cheated death. He had to chuckle. The idiot didn't know that he had fallen into an ancient trap for dark wizards. Horcruxes didn't work the way most books suggested. While they anchored your soul to the plain of the living, they didn't give you immortality. And while your soul pieces were connected, that posed a deathly trap.

Anybody that wanted to get rid of the dark wizard, only needed to find one of his horcruxes and perform the ritual of Cernunnus. The druids had come up with the way to exorcise dark wizards to hell. Anybody that was foolish enough to harm his own soul, was lost anyway. You could call all pieces of a soul together if you possessed even the slightest part of it. And once the parts were united in one place, you could easily kill the host. There even were portals that let you send the soul on into the afterlife. Most countries in Europe and Asia had them. The British Ministry even had one themselves, down in the Department of Mysteries. The veil of death was nothing but a portal to the afterlife.

The magic of the portal was that it separated a soul from its body the second over fifty percent of said body went inside. For dealing with dark wizards that meant one thing: You only had to call the soul pieces together, the containers and the main body would be called to the site of the ritual and the one thing you had to do, once the ritual had reunited the pieces, was giving the main body a push and you were done with the problem. You didn't need to destroy every single container. Not to mention that with splitting your soul, you also split your power.

But seemingly Dumbledore didn't know that and only had the stupid books that talked about destroying the containers to send the soul on. Well, it was logical that a country that condemned the dark arts like Britain did, and even refused to study them properly to be armed against them, would only have the barest information on things like this. There was a reason why Grindelwald never used the method. He knew that it would diminish his power and pose a lethal open flank.

Gabriel knew that there was a high probability that Voldemort had used his minions to hide his horcruxes. Lestrange, Malfoy, Dolohov and Crouch were the ones coming to mind first. He would have to search a few vaults in the near future. Death Eaters were so predictable about where they would hide their biggest treasures. Their vaults, secret rooms at their manors or special caves that they thought only they knew about. As if a good assassin wouldn't look there first if he planned to steal from them next to taking their life.

He could get this done the next time he was at Gringotts in London. The information said that anybody taking up the bounty hunting had to at least register their name, either at the Ministry or at Gringotts. Most would choose Gringotts, as it was stupid to trust the Ministry. Too many there held grudges and would condemn you as dark. He wasn't dark, he didn't let his soul fall that far. He was grey. He didn't use any magic that tainted the soul for his job. It was something that Master Kwan had always warned him about. Never use the true dark arts when, with a little bit more work, you could get the same results with the neutral arts.

While there was no reason to classify whole groups of spells as dark, as the intent of a spell made it dark, light or neutral, there were spells that had been developed to only serve dark purposes. You had to avoid those spells, as they would turn your mind and make you addicted.

* * *

Minister Scrimgeour looked over the list of bounty hunters that had registered for the hunt on the Death Eaters so far. There were only two, no-names at that, that had registered at the Ministry. He was still waiting for the list from Gringotts. He knew that most of the higher ranked ones would register there. And then only with their alias. The move was risky, but he honestly didn't have the manpower in the auror office, and don't get him started on the hit wizards, they were off worse than even the gutted auror office, to deal with the problem on Ministry power alone. The Fudge administration had destroyed any chance to oppose You-Know-Who properly. The DMLE had been one department that had suffered from budget cuts the most. And that when it was the most important department of the Ministry. But no amount of arguments had stood a chance against the bribes of the likes of Malfoy. May he burn in hell.

He heard a knock at the door and called the person inside. It was Weasley, the former personal assistant of Fudge. He had kept him on his team, as honestly, the boy at least knew how to work through heaps of paperwork properly, which couldn't be said about many at the Ministry. At least Weasley got the job done, even if he was a horribly authority abiding brownnoser. But he had to admit, he was improving, realising that he didn't need a yes man, he needed constructive information about people, locations, strategies and the like. He needed to find ways to prevent that the Ministry fell to their enemies. He could count on Weasley to have all reports sorted, created a brief summary of everything important going over his desk and managing his timetable.

"Minister, the list from Gringotts concerning the bounty hunting on the Death Eaters arrived five minutes ago," Weasley said.

"Thank you, Weasley, let me see it," Scrimgeour demanded and got the list.

He quickly went over the names. The list was much longer than any at the Ministry could hope to be. There was the known crème of the assassin and bounty hunters on here.

"So he took the bait," Scrimgeour mumbled, confirming the one name he wanted to see on this list.

"Who, Minister?" Weasley asked.

"The only one that can probably take care of our Dark Lord problem. I don't believe in the crap Dumbledore spouts anymore. With his flawed methods and after getting the report from my undercover investigators at Hogwarts, I doubt that either Dumbledore or Potter can truly kill You-Know-Who. What we need is a professional that can sneak in, get out and be sure to have done the job. And that person is on this list," Scrimgeour said and pointed at the name on the list that he meant.

Weasley's eyes widened.

"That will cause an uproar if it comes out," Weasley mentioned.

"I don't care. We are at war, the other side isn't going to spare anybody and I don't have the personnel to take out the threat. If it takes the best assassin of Europe to get rid of the problem, I'd rather pay a large amount of gold than having to explain why I let thousands of people die. Money can be made up for over time, lives not. And I don't have to tell you how people will react when people start dying like flies again."

"Yes, Minister, I understand," Weasley said and left the room.

He couldn't get the image out of his mind. The image of the man that led their country pointing out the name that he had hoped to find on the list.

Gabriel.

* * *

Gabriel grinned, looking at the innocent looking cup on his table. His hunch had been spot on. Death Eaters were so predictable. The vault of the first Death Eater he had hit, Bellatrix Lestrange, had been a bull's eye. The only thing he had needed to do was having a goblin take him down to the vault, which they did, as he had swiped the key that Iridia Lestrange had had on her person. He was honestly astonished that the key was still valid. He would have thought that her mother would have cancelled the key after the death of her daughter. Especially after he had already robbed the Malfoy vault the same way. But probably she was too far gone in the head to notice that detail.

Now he had the key to deal with Voldemort once and for all and cash in the huge bounty that the Ministry of Magic had put on his head. He was going to have to get a number of components for the ritual until he was ready, but this would give him the all the gold he would need to live his life in luxury until the very day that he died. He could cut back on the jobs and only take up those that were really lucrative and that really interested him. And the best part was, none of the other competitors would be able to stop him. After all, he was unique in his level of skills and had insider knowledge that none of them would have. And those exclusively trained in Britain or continental Europe would have a hard time finding the information about the horcrux trap.

* * *

Dumbledore was at the Ministry, attempting to make the Minister reconsider the outlawing of all Death Eaters, claiming that once they could take out Voldemort, the problem would be easy to solve. It didn't go well. It had been one month now since the bounties on the Death Eater heads had been set out and a few low-level ones had been handed over already. But the presence of the assassins and bounty hunters led to many trying to get a piece of the cake themselves. And Severus Snape was a popular target, which angered the headmaster.

"Professor Dumbledore, we don't have the means to go another route. Do you think I didn't wish to let the aurors and hit wizards deal with the threat? But, thanks to Fudge being allowed to run wild in office, the DMLE has been gutted. I have only the bare minimum of aurors to react to all the raids of Death Eaters that happen and in most cases we are too late to prevent a large number of deaths. The normal magical law enforcement patrol is already overworked, as many crooks are taking the chance to increase their shady business. I can't, like Fudge did in the past, have some junior aurors assist them, as I need the few qualified aurors that I have to fight Death Eaters and shadow possible unmarked supporters of You-Know-Who! And don't get me started on the hit wizards. We have three older ones that have enough experience to take on a senior Death Eater, but they aren't in peek condition and would fall too fast if it wasn't one on one battles, but the two younger ones that have the physical condition are green behind the ears. And do you honestly think that five of them would make a large difference? I would love to keep this inside the DMLE, but I don't have that option!" Scrimgeour ranted before the door was thrown open.

"Minister, there is a man in the atrium that has a large number of people tied up, all of them with their left sleeves ripped off, clearly showing the dark mark on them!" Weasley cried out.

"Wonderful. Weasley, with me! We're going to have our first major success to report in this war," Scrimgeour stated and left Dumbledore standing in his office, before he too followed to see who had captured which Death Eaters.

* * *

Many in the atrium looked worried at the picture of the young-looking black-haired man with the white trench coat and shades with a group of at least twenty Death Eaters tied up in front of him. There were many people in the group of caught Death Eaters that were well-known members of high society. Narcissa Malfoy, Fergus Nott, Epheneezer Parkinson and Esmeraude Zabini. Two ministry employees in Caspar Selwyn and Rachel Edgecombe. And many others that were known, but not that high up in society. It was a slap into the face of many, how easily they had allowed these criminals to get away with their lies or keep hidden. Then the lift opened and the Minister walked out of it, with his assistant and Professor Dumbledore following them.

"I have to say, I didn't expect such a success in such a short time," Scrimgeour couldn't help exclaim impressed, "Young man, you certainly have the gratitude of the Ministry for your actions."

"Thank you, Minister," the man replied smoothly, "I trust that the bounties will be confirmed with Gringotts, as is the agreement."

"Of course, the Ministry will pay you the agreed amount for them. Whose account are we to address?" Scrimgeour asked.

"Gabriel," he identified himself, making lots of people gasp, seeing the infamous assassin in front of them in person.

Gabriel could see how Dumbledore was seething. He knew that he wanted to get him back for killing a person at Hogwarts, which made people doubt the assurances, empty ones at that, that the school was safe. The wards were so easy to get through that it was a joke calling them security measures. Beauxbatons was better protected than the infamous Hogwarts. And right now Gabriel wanted to make a statement to the group of bounty hunters that he was part of the game and to better not mess with him. He could have delivered the captives to Gringotts, but this would work better for him in the long run. Not to mention that establishing good relations to the Ministry might net him some other jobs in the future, in case he was interested.

"Well, I have to admit, I didn't expect you to be this young, Gabriel. And while I can't condone your crimes in the past, I'm glad you took up the challenge," Scrimgeour stated sternly.

"A man has to do what he must to survive in this cruel world, Minister Scrimgeour," Gabriel replied calmly, "Blame whoever you want for how I turned out. Just one piece of advice. If you don't like how I turned out, then set up a department that screens the muggle orphanages for magical orphans and relocates them to proper magical families. My choice of profession was made because of my experiences there. And I know that my history isn't too different to that of Voldemort. He too was an orphan left at the mercy of intolerant muggles. I won't say that he wouldn't have turned out bad if he had got away from there, but I can say that it certainly played a large role in his choice of targets. I take my leave then," Gabriel stated and faded out of sight in a second.

Shouts out disbelief at the exit of the famous assassin ran through the atrium, but Scrimgeour looked grim at the advice he had got. It was definitely something to think about. He couldn't afford anybody else taking that road. Not if two powerful wizards had turned away from the lawful way of life thanks to it. How he wished he had found out about Gabriel earlier on. He would have made a damn fine auror if he didn't go onto the path of an assassin.

Unknown to him Dumbledore was pale. He had thought that he was one of the few that knew the origins of Voldemort. He had played a large role in leaving Tom Riddle at that muggle orphanage. He had advised headmaster Dippet to not get involved, as it wasn't the job of teachers to meddle with the home life of their students. Having it announced like this, could cause more trouble for him, which he currently really didn't need.

Scrimgeour had the aurors officially arrest the Death Eaters and put them into holding cells with magic suppressing cuffs. They weren't gentle with their new prisoners. Many had lost friends and family in their raids and having this many of them about to face justice, was very satisfying for them.

* * *

The Daily Prophet announced the successful arrest of twenty-two Death Eaters thanks to the assassin Gabriel delivering them to the atrium of the Ministry in person. Descriptions of the young assassin were spread, which made the assassin in question chuckle. Did they really think he would use his real appearance? The ones looking for him were running after a fake image. Though they were only the ones at the bottom of the European assassins' ladder, hoping to rise in standing by killing him off. He knew very well that he had a large bounty on his head himself, promised by families of his former victims. The one that Voldemort had put on his head was especially large. He offered anybody that brought him Gabriel dead or alive ten million galleons. Not a bad offer at all. But he didn't take into consideration that most assassins in Europe wouldn't dare going after somebody like him. He was too good at his job and he would, if they failed, which was a high probability, come after them and kill them instead.

No, the assassins of the world, once they reached a certain standing, let each other be. It was just common sense. You didn't poke into a nest of a dangerous poisonous snake after all and expected it to take it without attacking you. And Gabriel had long since made it abundantly clear that he didn't take attacks on him lying down. He was sure that the Minister of Magic of Norway still had nightmares from the scene Gabriel had left at his summer house to give a clear warning. The idiot had decided that Gabriel was too dangerous to be left alive and too uncontrollable. Well, having the other assassin draped all over his garden, bit for bit, when he arrived there for his annual summer vacation with his family certainly made him reconsider his actions. Gabriel had heard that he had needed counselling for at least half a year.

He returned to his preparations for the ritual of Cernunnus. He only needed to wait for the next new moon, then he would be ready to deal with Voldemort once and for all. In the meantime, he would round up a few more Death Eaters. The information he had got by questioning Iridia Lestrange gave him all the advantage he needed. He would find all the ones that had bounties on their heads and bring them in. If the Ministry wasn't going to execute them, he had placed a little reassurance onto their bodies that nobody would notice until it was too late. They had an invisible rune tattooed onto their dark marks. The rune would activate after three days of being close to dementors.

It would kill them within a week by draining their magic. The magic would go into the wards surrounding Hogwarts, which he thought was an ironic and fitting fate for those murderers. And nobody would be able to prove that he had anything to do with it. After all, who would ever think that he had found the key stone of the Hogwarts wards and created a connection to the kind of rune he had left on the dark marks? Especially if even a proficient curse-breaker would only notice the rune if he used a special spell? Very unlikely. And honestly, people would assume that others, which were in contact with the dead Death Eaters after he had delivered them to the Ministry, had something to do with the mysterious deaths.

He had got confirmation from the goblins that his vault balance had shot up significantly. It was nice to see that the Minister was smart enough to not cheat him. That would have had unpleasant consequences. That reminded him, he had to go there for the inheritance test as well. The goblins had been writing him requests for a meeting for some time now. He of course knew that there was a way to find out your heritage by a test the goblins could do. He was just unsure if he wanted to know. What if he found out that he still had family somewhere and they had abandoned him? It was much easier to believe that his parents were among the victims in the war in Britain and he had just been unlucky. On the other hand, it would be a waste of money, if he did have some gold waiting for him at Gringotts and didn't claim it. In the end his hate of wasting money and his plans for his future in riches won off against his insecurity. It was about time he faced the shadows of his past.

* * *

Adrian Potter was walking next to Albus Dumbledore. They were on the way to Gringotts to claim Adrian's inheritance. He had turned seventeen the day before and had celebrated the occasion with a great party at the Burrow. He knew that Dumbledore didn't have to live long anymore. He had been told this morning, therefore he was subdued. He knew that fighting the war would be much harder without the old wizard stalling Voldemort. But the curse on the hand that he had got from destroying the ring in the Gaunt shack was killing him. He didn't have more than at most a month. He needed to get things settled before he went on to his next great adventure.

Adrian was looking forward to finally having access to his family's full fortune. He had wanted to access it before, but he didn't get the goblins to comply. They insisted that only on the day the heir came of age, which could either be by passing his NEWTs or by turning seventeen, the Potter family vault would be unsealed. They reached the bank and walked through the doors. The next free teller was approached and they stated their business, namely Adrian taking a heritage test and claiming the Potter vaults.

The goblin nodded to the test and led the two wizards to the inheritance department. There they had to wait for fifteen minutes and then a bowl with a potion and a silver dagger were brought in.

"Cut your hand and let seven drops of blood fall into the bowl, wizard," the goblin stated gruffly.

Adrian didn't like the treatment he got, they should be much politer to the Chosen One, but he complied. The potion changed colours after two minutes and the goblin opened a hole at the bottom of the bowl and let the potion flow out onto a stone tablet under it. Then a few flashes of light took place and some runes on the tablet glowed, which the goblin noted down.

"Adrian Charlus Potter, born 31st July 1981, second born son to Lord James Potter and Lady Lily Potter nee Evans," the goblin stated in a neutral voice, "By will of your parents you get vault number 412. Access to the Potter family vault has to be granted by the new Lord Potter."

"But I'm the new Lord Potter," Adrian protested.

"No, you're not. Didn't you listen? You're the second born son. Your older brother is the new Lord Potter," the goblin remarked, "Here is the key to your vault. Now leave, I have more work to do."

The two gobsmacked wizards left the room and Adrian was fuming.

"What does that mean, Professor Dumbledore? I don't have any siblings! Or did my father sire a bastard son before I was born?" Adrian demanded to know.

This was a serious blow to him. Dumbledore looked really pale and shaken.

"This can't be. He was a squib. He wasn't a wizard and he therefore shouldn't have any rights to the title and the family vault," he mumbled.

"Who?" Adrian demanded.

Dumbledore looked at Adrian with a grave look on his face. Then he decided on a course of action.

"Fawkes!" He called out and the phoenix appeared, "Hold on, Adrian, we will talk in my office at Hogwarts. This can't be discussed in the open."

Adrian nodded reluctantly and they disappeared in a flash of fire from the phoenix. When they reappeared in Dumbledore's office, the old man let himself fall into his armchair heavily.

"I demand to know what's going on!" Adrian repeated.

"I guess there is no other way anymore. I didn't tell you before and asked anybody who knew to keep silent, as I wanted to spare you the pain over the loss of your brother. Your older twin brother to be precise," Dumbledore said.

"I have a twin?" Adrian asked flabbergasted.

"Yes. His name is Hadrian James Potter, but your parents mostly called him Harry, and he was born ten minutes before you. When Voldemort killed your parents, both you and Hadrian were in the house. I tested both of you when I arrived there and found you both still alive. As you know, you defeated Voldemort and got the scar from him that still tells you when he's close or particularly angry. Your magic was fairly strong for a baby of just fifteen months. Hadrian's magic meanwhile just qualified him as a squib. I decided that, as you would be in the centre of public attention once you were older and would be trained to face Voldemort one day, it would be cruel on Hadrian if he was to grow up in your shadow. Therefore, I placed you with your foster father and Hadrian at a muggle orphanage. They would be able to find a good family for him and he would have a normal life, not even knowing that there was a world of magic that he was born into, but could never be a part of as a squib. You have seen how people treat squibs like Mr Filch or Mrs Figg. Many families think that those children are better off dead than alive to shame their family name," Dumbledore pointed out.

"I wanted to spare Hadrian that and placed him into an orphanage in London. As he never got a Hogwarts letter, I assumed that my decision had been the right one. Had I been wrong, I would have introduced both of you to each other once you started your first year. While that would have been an unfortunate event, I was really sure that Hadrian didn't have enough magic to come to Hogwarts. I don't know what happened to him. I never went to look, but now it seems that he has enough magic to satisfy the requirements of magic for the title of your family. James never had any other children than you two."

Adrian had to sit down. Being told that you had a twin brother running around somewhere was a heavy blow.

"You had no right to keep that from me!" He finally growled out, "It should have been my decision to see if I wanted to meet my twin. You didn't even once mention him in all of the six years I have been at Hogwarts!"

Adrian was angry. Family was always a sore topic for him. While his foster father was a nice man, he wasn't blood and he didn't feel a really close connection with him. He had never been treated like a real son by the man, always a charge that had to be protected and treated well. Remus and Sirius were okay, but they too weren't real family. Seeing the Weasleys was the one thing that Adrian was actually jealous of. And now, finding out that there was some blood family left, it was unforgivable. Especially as it was clear that if the goblin hadn't told him about Hadrian, he would never have found out.

"I believed that it was for the best. You had the prophecy over your head and he didn't have magic that I could tell of. Had I let him grow up with you, he might have come to resent you. That would have hurt you much more than not knowing about him," Dumbledore reasoned.

But Adrian didn't want to listen. He stormed out of the office, making the portraits on the wall reprimand his behaviour. But what did they know? They hadn't been lied to about their family in a major way for all of their lives.

* * *

 **That's it for today. Until next time.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Thank you everybody that reviewed the previous chapters. This story is going better than I thought at first. Hope you like the newest chapter as well. Happy reading.**

* * *

 **Black Case**

Gabriel pondered the results of his test. He would never have imagined his true heritage. It brought up some questions about how he had ended in that cursed orphanage. And how he would treat his newly discovered twin brother. Hadrian James Potter. What an irony. Older twin to the spoiled Brat-That-Lived. Great. Well, the Potter lordship was nice, he had to admit that. But he could hardly simply walk up to people and claim his seat at the Wizengamot. They would want to know all about him, simply because his twin was famous.

And he wouldn't give up his profession, just because it would look dishonourable. He didn't think much about the honour of people anyway. Few people had any honour to talk about. They all acted in some way or another to their own benefit and the interests of others always came in second. And the worst examples normally ended on the list for him to kill. And honestly, when Master Kwan had graduated him after his training under him, he hadn't expected that he could earn so much money so quickly alone in England. And that within perhaps a year. The new amnesty for those that hunted and brought down the Death Eaters might be interesting for those that planned to retire from being an assassin anyway. They would then be able to settle down somewhere nice with all their money, free of persecution.

But he was just seventeen. It was way too early for him. Well, he could stay in the shadows. It was possible to send a proxy to vote his seat, which he could then do himself using his metamorphmagus ability. The black haired look with green eyes was not his true form. It was just the one he used most. Ironic, when he now knew that his twin had that hair and eye colour. It was truly useful to be able to become anybody he wanted to be. He decided to simply let things be for now and go back to hunting down more Death Eaters. One name promised an especially high reward. Sirius Black. Second-In-Command to Voldemort himself.

Gabriel scoffed at the security precautions that the place where Black was hidden had on it. While the Fidelius charm in itself was a nice idea, there were so many ways to get around it. And it wasn't really necessary for the secret keeper to tell you where the place was, if you followed the secret keeper to the place, you were seen as being told the secret. He had only needed to follow some known Dumbledore supporters to their so-called headquarters in London to get the position and after that he had tailed Dumbledore and after a week he had found the house. After having sneaked into the Ministry archives to find more information on Black, he knew that the case had more holes than a Swiss cheese. He would have to be very mistaken if Black was actually a Death Eater. And using some legilimency on Arthur Weasley, a known Dumbledore supporter, who didn't know occlumency for some reason, gave him the information that Black was hiding at the headquarters of Dumbledore's group, with Dumbledore as the secret keeper. Too easy, really.

And all he needed to get first rate information was using his ability to get into the Ministry of magic, after having observed a few of the normal workers that could go around the whole place, and then walk around, scanning the minds of all kinds of people. His surface tests were never noticed, he had a knack for any kind of mind magic, and he could determine who had occlumency knowledge and shields. Not that it would really work when he was serious, but for a covert operation of information gathering he didn't want to really attack. But the number of unprotected minds was staggering. Just by spending one day there as different people, to make sure that nobody noticed that there were two of one person running around, he could have blackmailed the whole institution.

He had to grin when he thought how others would go about this task. There were ways to impersonate others outside of being a metamorphmagus of course, but they normally relied on drugging that person and it always was found out later on. Simply because the person would report the incident and then the trouble started. It would be investigated and the security precautions increased. This way, nobody would think anything wrong. It might happen that you were seen in two places at the same time, but most people would shrug it off as a misunderstanding in concerns of the time. And if you were careful about who you impersonated, meaning nobody in high places, but basic workers, you got away with so much.

* * *

It was three in the morning right now and everything was silent. He closed the distance to the door of the hidden house and silently slipped inside. The lock wasn't really a problem. Silently he entered the house and he wasn't really impressed with what he saw. He had expected more splendour from a family like the Blacks. His research had told him that the house was the ancestral home of the Blacks.

His collecting of Death Eaters was going really well and he had delivered ten more of the small fry and five bigger fishes. His bank account was filling really well. Other hunters had also brought in a good number of them and the Minister was happy being able to announce that his harsh step was working. But this case intrigued Gabriel. After all, Black could be delivered dead or alive and if he informed the Minister of the holes in the case, he could easily manipulate the man into giving Black a long-overdue trial. No matter what, Scrimgeour, if he was as good a politician as Gabriel suspected he was, could turn this to his advantage. Not his mistake and he was cleaning up the mistakes of his predecessors. Always a workable line. And people loved if a sob story was in the background.

After ten minutes of exploring the house, he was sure that right now only Black and the old, deranged house elf were there. And a small vial of a special sleeping potion took the elf out of the equation. How convenient for him. They really put too much trust into the fidelius charm. Gabriel went upstairs without making any noise and went to the only occupied bedroom. He disabled any kind of trap at the door and wanted to scoff at how at ease Black was. He was sleeping with his wand on his bedside table, no weapon anywhere near him. A simple summoning charm got him the wand and another spell had Black tied up in ropes. Gabriel locked the door to remain undisturbed, no matter what Black might try when he was awake.

At least being tied up woke Black up.

"What?" Black exclaimed and struggled to get out of the ropes.

"Your security system sucks, Black," Gabriel commented and lit a few candles around the room to have a better look at Black. He certainly still showed signs of being in Azkaban for over a decade.

"How did you get in here? The house is under a fidelius charm!" Black demanded to know.

"You really have other problems, Black. Right now, you should try convincing me to deliver you to the Ministry alive," Gabriel pointed out, "Just for the bounty, I don't need to keep you alive. I could just kill you and get all the gold set aside for your case."

Black looked panicked.

"I'm innocent. Neither did I betray the Potters, nor did I kill Pettigrew and the muggles. Pettigrew was the true secret keeper and betrayed them to Voldemort. I couldn't even think of betraying them, because I was Hadrian Potter's oath-bound godfather, the same was true for Remus Lupin and Adrian Potter. With making Peter Pettigrew the secret keeper, James wanted to give all of his closest friends an important position in his family's lives," Black informed Gabriel.

"Interesting. Yes, a true magical godfather's oath would have prevented that you could give up the position of your godchild. That is a point in your favour, Black, but the incident with the massacre of the muggles is still unexplained," Gabriel commented.

"I lost it, okay? My best friend, who was like a brother to me, had just been killed. And when I reached the house, I couldn't find either Hadrian or Adrian. Both twins were gone. I'm even one of the few people that still remembers that there were twins born to the Potters and not one child, as most think. I wanted revenge. I wanted to kill Peter. But the snivelling little rat was smarter than I thought. I managed to track him down after two days, but he shouted 'James and Lily, Sirius, how could you?' and fired a blasting curse from behind his back. That curse hitting a gas pipe in the street is what killed the muggles. Pettigrew turned into a rat, his animagus form by the way, and escaped through the sewers. I was in shock. They say you either cry or laugh in a situation like that. I laughed. When the Ministry emergency team arrived, they took me in, never questioned me, and I spent twelve years innocently at Azkaban. All while scum like Snape got Dumbledore's protection for turning spy against Voldemort. Hah, as if!" Sirius cried out angrily.

Gabriel pondered the information he had just got. The details fit with what he had found. He had scoffed at the idea of just a finger remaining of a person killed by a blasting curse that caused a gas-line explosion. Especially with a mostly intact, slightly bloody robe. Any assassin worth that name would have smelled the cover up from a mile away.

"So I guess the finger was either an accident or intentional on his part?" Gabriel asked.

"He cut it off before he turned into a rat. Faking his death, he was never even thought to be the true culprit. I later found out that he had managed to be taken in as a pet by the Weasleys," Black confirmed.

"Hm, it does sound right. A little interrogation under veritaserum will take care of any remaining doubts. It certainly fills the glaring holes in the story that was put into the file they have of you at the Ministry," Gabriel commented.

"How did you get my file? Fudge, after Adrian told him about finding out that Pettigrew was still alive, sealed the file for everybody but the Minister of Magic," Sirius wanted to know.

"It's terribly easy to sneak into the Ministry archives for somebody of my skill level, Black. Their level of security is a joke and if I wanted to blow the place up, I could very easily achieve it in one night. But right now they pay too well for the little hunt on Death Eaters, so I won't bother," Gabriel said off-handed.

"You talk awfully casual about killing," Black commented.

"I'm the best professional assassin in Europe, Black. Do you really think I would care about a few people dying? Especially when that building is filled with lots of corrupt and stupid inbreeds? Hardly," Gabriel scoffed.

"Ah, so I have the pleasure of meeting Gabriel, the one assassin that managed to really piss Dumbledore off," Black nodded, a bit calmed down after still being alive so far.

"Indeed. If he had wanted to prevent my actions, he should have looked out a lot better for the students under his care. It was easy to spot that Granger had been switched out for an imposter, but he never saw it, being too busy. His teachers also don't keep a close enough eye on the students. At my old school something like that would have been impossible. There are lots of wards that prevent a person being replaced long-term. A day or two might have been possible for a very skilled professional, but even I wouldn't be able to take the position of one of their students without being found out quickly. And for the record, I walked directly up to the front doors of Hogwarts, following a group of students during a Hogsmeade weekend, even if I was invisible, and got in there.

"Letting a squib do detection of contraband and dark objects is ridiculous. And the vaunted wards of Hogwarts need an overhaul. Too much magic that wasn't properly connected. Once you're past the ward line, you're safe. And that line starts at the gates," Gabriel revealed.

"That would be like Dumbledore, all talk and no real action," Black acknowledged, "So what do you plan now?"

"Oh, I have a nice little scenario in mind," Gabriel smirked, "For the bounty it isn't necessary that you're handed over to the Ministry. I only need to take you to Gringotts and prove your identity. The goblins will then transfer the gold to one of my vaults there. After that I can sneak into the Minister's office with you and show him what I found out, of course I'll dose you with veritaserum, so that nobody can doubt it as the truth. With enough witnesses in high enough positions, there won't be a way to hide it any longer. And honestly, if Fudge hadn't been so deep in Malfoy's pocket, he would have realised the political potential that this had."

"I don't guess that I have a choice?" Black asked.

"No, you don't. But at least I'm even willing to do it this way. With other bounty hunters and assassins, you would have a much harder time," Gabriel commented and then shot a stunner at Black.

He took a deep breath once the man had slumped over. He hadn't known that Black was his godfather. Sure, it didn't mean as much anymore, as he was already of age, but damn, if somebody hadn't meddled in things, he wouldn't have had to live at that horrible orphanage.

He quickly put Black under a glamour, he didn't want to risk anything in delivering him and getting the bounty, even if he now had confirmed that he had been set up, and he could detect if anybody lied, he knew all the tricks to really lie, and then left the house. The mirage charm on both of them prevented that anybody saw them leaving the house. Gabriel put Black on the passenger seat of the car and took the driver's seat. Why apparate, which would be noticed by the other assassins in the Alley, when you could simply use muggle ways? And nobody would even think that a teenager driving a car was weird. You were allowed to drive when you turned seventeen after all.

Gabriel had a licence under one of his aliases, which he could use if any policeman should stop the car for a control. Not that they would find anything. He had the weapons hidden under notice-me-not charms under the rear bench seat. They never looked there first anyway. The first place they looked always into was the boot. They would, if they suspected anything, search for hidden compartments there and from the boot there was no way to open the storage under the rear bench seat. That only worked from the passenger room. And there the charm was active.

* * *

It was a short drive to Charing Cross Road, where he simply walked through the pub, which was empty at this time of the day, only a sign told people that the pub would open for breakfast at seven in the morning again. Around most areas was a ward that prevented people from going to certain areas, but as this was the main entrance to Diagon Alley, it wasn't completely closed at night. There were other entrances of course, but Gabriel had no desire to go through Knockturn Alley, as there the danger of having to fight for his captive was much larger.

Sirius Black had the second highest bounty in all of Great Britain on his head. The largest one belonged to Voldemort himself. He easily opened the archway to the Alley and had Black hover after him while keeping up the mirage charm. It didn't take long to reach Gringotts. He went to a side room that had been set up for delivery of bounties. It was manned with two goblins.

Gabriel removed his mirage charm and undid the glamour on Black.

"I'm here to cash in a bounty for capture of a fugitive alive and request an immediate portkey to the Ministry, as soon as the bounty is registered to my name," Gabriel stated, being fully business-like.

"Certainly, name of the fugitive?" The goblin asked and took out a list of wanted criminals.

"Sirius Black," Gabriel answered.

"A blood test will be required to confirm your claim," the goblin said, not really looking interested in the high-profile capture.

"Of course," Gabriel nodded and let the goblin cut the man's finger with a silver knife.

The blood was dropped onto a green gem and it turned to blue.

"Identity confirmed. Which vault are we to send the bounty to?" The goblin asked while writing something on the list.

"Gabriel," he answered.

"Certainly. By the way, all goblins manning the bounty office were asked to relay the message to you that one of our senior account managers would like to discuss investment options with you, after the hunt on the Death Eaters is over. With how much you have already earned, you could let your gold do the work for you and never have to work another day in your life," The goblin told him.

"I'll take it under advertisement. Where will the portkey take me exactly at the Ministry?" Gabriel asked.

"DMLE and the Minister will be immediately called in as well for this high of a profile of the captive," The goblin replied and handed him a business card.

Gabriel took it and took hold of Black's hand, putting one finger to the card. He normally would never trust a portkey he didn't make himself, but the goblins wouldn't dare setting him up. He was far too rich for that and allowed them to invest a large part of his fortune. They got ten percent of the winnings, which was a good deal for both sides. Therefore, they had no interest in betraying him. They would only endanger their own profit. The portkey activated and both men were taken away.

* * *

Rufus Scrimgeour walked into the office of the head of the DMLE. Amelia Bones had been injured when Voldemort had attacked her home, but she had managed to escape severely injured. She now had a prosthetic left eye like Alastor Moody and burn scars on her right arm. But she had survived and was more determined than ever to get the Death Eaters. She had been fully supportive of his decision to outlaw the Death Eaters and offer bounties for every one that was caught. While she would have preferred to handle things by the DMLE, she knew better than anybody how much their funds had been cut over the years.

She had refused the Minister position, as she wanted to direct the fight from where she could directly influence it. He had been called at five in the morning, with the message that Sirius Black had finally been caught. This would be incredibly good PR for the Ministry. When he opened the door, he found a strange sight. Amelia was chatting amicably with Gabriel, the youngest, but also best, among the assassins and bounty hunters out there. While he had hoped that the assassin would join the hunt, he didn't understand why Amelia of all people would get along with him so well.

"Ah, Rufus, good to see you. You wouldn't believe what kind of incredible information Gabriel found and is willing to share with us to get back on our feet once the threat of Voldemort is dealt with," Amelia said.

"Really?" Scrimgeour asked surprised.

"I have no interest in your country besides the bounties that I can earn here. But I have even less interest in having a cesspool boiling under the surface. That is asking for trouble. And if that boils over, people will suffer. Innocent people, especially children. While I have no qualms going after adults, I never target children," Gabriel informed the Minister.

Scrimgeour nodded. That quirk of the assassin was known.

"So what kind of ideas are we talking about here?" Scrimgeour asked and took a seat, looking over at the captured Sirius Black, who was tied to an interrogation chair. He wouldn't go anywhere.

"First is setting up a proper security system for your Ministry and Hogwarts. Take it from a professional, it's laughably easy to get into both places and kill lots of people," Gabriel stated, "The wards of the school need to be set up anew with all wards being interweaved. Right now many of them collide and create holes that can be exploited. Interweaved wards prevent that. Second is getting yourself a proper military force. The muggles have special units of policemen and soldiers that work on higher grade threats. For that I recommend taking the graduates of Hogwarts, even if they don't have the full qualifications you ask for, mainly Potions and Defence are the classes I think about, but Runes are also a problem, as too few take that class, and then train them up for three to five years.

"Make them aurors after three years and specialists after five. Think up a name that you find inspiring for the specialists and advertise that career path. As far as I'm informed, Hogwarts only offers one hour of career advice for the students in their fifth year. That is way too late if you need a certain subject for a job you find interesting. Send your representatives of the Educational Department to Hogwarts when the students are in their second year and let them inform all children in a collective meeting about the electives. I would also add more useful electives to the mix and update the curriculum. You can ask other schools about their curriculums, as the ones for Hogwarts are laughably outdated in many cases. And they are far behind what other countries teach their children. In the long run it will reflect badly on Britain.

"Also, take a larger involvement in your main magical school. Right now they breed extremists there. The conflict with Voldemort wouldn't have grown uncontrollable, if he didn't get lots of willing recruits all the time, and about ninety per cent of them have graduated from Hogwarts. That can't continue. The idea of a High Inquisitor wasn't a bad one in principle, but sending a child hater that was guilty of having innocent children murdered, just because they weren't purebloods, or were bitten by a werewolf, was the worst thing you could have done. And no, I don't regret killing her at all. She deserved what she got," Gabriel declared and the other two knew better than objecting.

Dolores Umbridge had been a nasty piece of work, but she had been protected by Fudge and they didn't have enough proof to arrest her at the time. She had been good at covering her back.

"Another thing is not letting one person hold as many high political offices as you allow Albus Dumbledore. The Minister has to choose a proxy for a Wizengamot seat after being elected, to avoid a conflict of interest, even if Fudge didn't do that, being a corrupt idiot, who then wasn't reigned in properly when it was clear. It would be logical to not let any one person have that much power. ICW, Wizengamot and Hogwarts are not something one man alone should be allowed to control.

"I also think that you should lessen pressure on the so-called dark creatures and magical races. Give them autonomy to rule their people as they like, as long as they adhere to the laws of Magical Britain. You'll have a lot less problems with them if you stop bullying them. Guarantee races like the centaurs their native lands inside the Forbidden Forest as long as they allow harmless travellers and those from Hogwarts that collect ingredients for the Potions classes to pass their lands on the designated paths in there. You don't have any real use for the place anyway. They can keep their living places closed off to outsiders. And anybody acting aggressively should be detained by them and delivered to a collection point where they can call the aurors to take them to the Ministry. Similar arrangements could be made with others," Gabriel pointed out.

Scrimgeour pondered the idea. It sounded good and would be easily done. And he really needed less trouble than he currently had. Getting some tensions reduced with magical creatures would help in that regard. And it wouldn't cost a lot either. Gabriel was right that nobody but the school had any use for the forest and only in the areas that the young assassin had mentioned.

"Then I suggest that you get more elected representatives into the Wizengamot. At least half of the members should have been elected by the people, better would be all, but change is slow in this country, therefore half would be a good first step. It will lessen the backlash of decisions made there on the people. And you can even reason that because of the loss of so many old families you want to bring the number of Wizengamot members back to the original numbers. While that will step on some people's toes, it won't be as harsh a blow as it could otherwise be, especially as you got rid of the worst extremists by having Death Eaters become outlaws. Hold public elections every four to five years and you'll see how approval rates for the government will rise. It will also limit the damage extremists can do. After all, if you limit the inherited spots, if an extremist sits in one of those, he can be counterbalanced," Gabriel pointed out.

"Those suggestions are certainly worth thinking about. But I wonder why you're that amicable with each other," Scrimgeour commented.

"Ah, that would be because Gabriel gave me the recipes for three variants of potions that our department regularly uses. They work much better and have less side-effects than the formulas we have. Veritaserum without the risk of causing allergic reactions for some people, which means we can use it on everybody now, polyjuice potion that holds for two hours and tastes less horribly and super powered essence of dittany," Bones explained.

"And you're simply giving them to us? Without anything in return?" Scrimgeour asked sceptically.

"The only thing I ask for in return is that you use the veritaserum on Sirius Black right now with about five high-ranking witnesses present. He told me a peculiar story and if it's true, you might be able to gain a lot of political clout for cleaning up a mess your predecessors caused. And you can close the hole in the security of Azkaban, which would make my job easier. I don't fancy having the guys I delivered to you broken out by their boss after all," Gabriel commented off-handed.

Both nodded and Madam Bones called for five Ministry employees that were known to be absolutely trustworthy. Kingsley Shacklebolt, as he led the hunt on Sirius Black, Arthur Weasley, Dirk Cresswell, Griselda Marchbanks and Amanda Rowthan. As soon as they were there, next to two other aurors that had been around when she called for Shacklebolt, Gawain Robards and Nymphadora Lupin, Scrimgeour personally dosed Black with the veritaserum.

"State your full name and birthday," Scrimgeour started the standard interrogation.

"Sirius Orion Black, tenth December 1960," he answered monotonously.

"Are you a Death Eater?" Scrimgeour continued with the agreed standard.

"No, never was either," Black answered.

That shocked many, though Gabriel could see that Shacklebolt, Weasley and Lupin didn't seem to be surprised. Well, he knew that Weasley was part of Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix. And Lupin was the surname of Black's best friend. So she probably belonged to the group as well.

"Did you betray the Potters?"

"No, I couldn't even if I would have wanted to."

"Why couldn't you betray them?"

"I'm Hadrian Potter's oath-bound godfather. You can't do anything intentionally that has a high probability of harming your godchild. Magic wouldn't allow it," Black pointed out.

"Hadrian Potter?" Madam Bones asked.

"He's Adrian's older twin brother."

"Do you know where he is?" She wanted to know, shocked about the news.

"No, I lost any trace of him when I was sent to Azkaban without a trial."

"WHAT?" Many of the aurors shouted enraged.

"Did you really not get a trial after you were arrested?" Madam Bones demanded to know.

"No, Crouch didn't think it necessary. He only wanted to chuck as many Death Eaters into that place as possible. It looked better for his reputation of a hardliner. I wasn't even questioned. Just left there and forgotten," Black answered.

"Did you kill Pettigrew?" Scrimgeour asked.

"No, the little rat set me up. He's an unregistered animagus and can turn into a rat. He blamed me, by loudly shouting that the muggles heard him, 'James and Lily, Sirius, how could you?' and then blasted the ground open, probably knowing where a gas line was. He didn't have the power to cause that much damage otherwise. But I was thrown away by the shock wave of the explosion and when I got my sense of orientation back, I saw that he had cut his finger off and turned into a rat, disappearing through the sewer. I was already instable, so I laughed that weak little Peter had got one over me, who had always been better than him at school," Black explained.

Shocked silence met these revelations.

"How was this overlooked?" Scrimgeour asked, not really addressing Black, but he still answered, compelled to do it by the veritaserum.

"Nobody properly investigated. The auror on scene was the then rookie Dawlish, who believed the idiot Fudge when he spouted his conclusions how things must have been. My wand wasn't checked, just broken in half, I wasn't questioned and Crouch just signed the transfer papers to Azkaban with Bagnold. It was so 'obvious' that I had to be guilty, after all I was a Black, no matter if I had been the rebel against the dark leanings of me family all my life, so a trial wasn't needed according to them."

"By the way, any rookie lawyer would have ripped the Ministry a new one, had this gone on trial. There were so many holes in the file, it was obvious that something was fishy. Which was also the reason why I decided to turn Black in alive. For the bounty it didn't matter after all," Gabriel spoke up.

"We have to clear this up at once, Rufus," Madam Bones declared, while giving Gabriel a slightly reproachful look, not being happy about him admitting he had got to the file by sneaking into the Ministry, but he just shrugged.

"Yes, we can't let this stand. And honestly, it wasn't our fault. We can spin it as finally getting the truth out of Black and then giving him back his freedom. But I wonder if we should do something to find Hadrian Potter. I mean, if he's older than his twin brother, then he is the one with the claim to the Wizengamot seat," Scrimgeour pondered.

"We can do that once things are peaceful again," Bones replied, "But I agree, we can spin this the way that we only cleared up a long-standing injustice. Combined with the success that the step to outlaw the Death Eaters has been, we would gain some more support for the Ministry. Really, why Fudge didn't do it earlier is a mystery to me."

"He didn't want to face that the Ministry could have made a mistake and grabbed the stupid story that Snape came up with happily. It was so much more believable to him that I had confunded three teenagers, which by the way would have stopped working after an hour or so, into believing that I was innocent. Adrian Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger had seen Pettigrew alive at the end of their third year at Hogwarts. Adrian and Hermione also tried telling that to Fudge, but he didn't believe them, not taking their word over Snape's, who is a Death Eater and hates me since we were at school," Sirius pointed out.

"Say, Gabriel, is that veritaserum perhaps even more different than the one we have?" Bones addressed Gabriel.

"Yes, it's stronger. The one you dose with it, is compelled to give you all information on a topic, not just what you ask him. That's why Black gave so many details that you didn't strictly ask for. It's the complete truth, but also all he knows about things. Though even veritaserum can't get around a fidelius charm or a magical oath to not talk about something," Gabriel explained.

She nodded pleased with the possibilities that the potion offered them now. Then things were done quickly. Scrimgeour wrote an official pardon for Sirius, after asking how he broke out of Azkaban and waiving the fine for being an unregistered animagus, it would be petty to do that after the gigantic blunder the Ministry had caused in the past, all the witnesses present signed it and an official statement was given that would be published in the Daily Prophet. Gabriel left without anybody noticing. His job was done, he had his money and now he could take care of the last piece of the puzzle.

* * *

It was finally the night of the new moon. Gabriel stood in the centre of a little known stone circle deep inside a Scottish forest. He had had to fully let go of his morphing for the first time in over a year, which meant he for once had his true looks. Though as nobody was around to see it, he didn't mind. He didn't like showing people his real face, it posed a weakness that could be explored. His hair was actually a dark reddish brown, about shoulder length, and his face looked totally different. Where he normally used a no-name face with no real distinctive features, his face looked aristocratic, in a hardened way.

He guessed having to fight for anything in his life had left traces on his face. He did resemble Adrian Potter only in the furthest sense. Their eyes had the same colour and shape, but that was it. They were clearly fraternal twins. Not to mention that Gabriel's eyes held a hardness that had come from years of being very aware that a mistake on a job could cost his life. While Adrian had been in dangerous situations, he had never been in that kind of position.

Finally, the preparations were done. The stones that bore the runes of the god Cernunnus were placed in a pentagram around Gabriel, who only wore a white linen robe. You weren't allowed to hide anything about yourself in this ritual. It didn't matter if you were a good or bad person, you just had to be honest about it. The cup rested on another crystal that was engraved with the rune for assembling. He started chanting in Gaelic. This being a druidic ritual demanded it being done in an older tongue than current day English and Latin was a foreign language and not bound to the land. The power of the chant was amplified by the stone circle and the call for all the other pieces of the soul was sent out constantly.

It took a lot of concentration and constant flow of his magic, but he felt the answers already. There were a good number of answers to the call. After half an hour the first other soul piece arrived and was drawn into the cup, under screaming. For the next hour and a half, he kept the ritual going and then, finally, the last part, the main part of the soul, flew at him, shouting in rage, cursing up a storm, threatening him with torture and death. As if a soul piece like that could ever frighten him. He was Gabriel, the bringer of judgement. Voldemort was sealed in the cup as well.

Gabriel allowed himself some time to breathe. It was strenuous to use that much magic for such a long period of time. Voldemort was truly sick to make this many horcruxes.

* * *

Sirius Black and Remus Lupin were at Remus' cottage, hidden deep inside a Scottish forest. They had celebrated Sirius' freedom for hours and had decided to take a stroll. Remus' wife was too busy to join them, as the Minister was having all existing aurors work overtime. As it was the night of the new moon, there was no risk whatsoever with Remus' lycanthropy. Sirius had told the bizarre story of the assassin Gabriel of all people being the reason for the new development.

When they were about to head back to drink some more, they suddenly felt a large concentration of magic. They were both too used to being careful whenever that kind of strong magic was used, so they used a sobering charm on each other, they could get drunk again later, and slowly went to the stone circle that Remus knew was close to his home. What they found there was a real surprise. They had thought that druids had gone extinct years ago, what with Voldemort hunting them even more than muggleborns. But there, inside the centre of the circle, stood a figure in a white linen robe, which clearly performed a druidic ritual.

They stayed at a distance, knowing better than to interrupt a ritual that didn't feel dark at all. They observed what was going on and were baffled when screaming spirits arrived at the stone circle one after another. It seemed to have started some time ago, as the magic in the air was thick and nearly touchable. None of them spoke, too awed by the display in front of them. They didn't know how long it had been, but they realised just what kind of spirits had been called when they recognised the voice of Voldemort, cursing up a storm, threatening the druid that was performing the ritual.

The magic died down shortly after that and they couldn't help themselves going closer to the stone circle. They saw how the man was leaning onto a fallen stone. It had to be exhausting to use that much magic. They watched how he swayed. One nod to the other and they stopped hiding and walked to the stone circle openly. Sirius had been taught that if you entered a stone circle, you had to be open about it. Otherwise the magic could have a bad backlash.

"Stay outside of the circle," they heard the man say suddenly.

"We only wanted to see if you were okay," Sirius called out, "We saw you performing a ritual for over an hour and were part curious and part concerned."

"So you saw it, well, nothing to do about it now," The man replied, "The magic is still too wild for anybody but me being inside this circle right now. Should you enter, it will at least knock you out for three days."

They took the warning serious and stayed outside.

"Can you tell us what the ritual was? I thought all druids were killed by Voldemort," Sirius asked the man, who kept his back to them, still breathing hard.

"I'm no druid, I just know about their magic and can use certain rituals, like any properly trained wizard could," Was the answer.

"I never heard about something like that," Remus said.

"They don't teach things like that at Hogwarts, which is ironic, as this is the native magic of this country. But your stupid Ministry labelled any kind of rituals and lots of old magic dark. They're so frightened of people not following their stupid lead that they call several grey and neutral arts dark. Idiots," The man scoffed.

They couldn't get a good look at him, as there was no natural light with the moon being completely in the shadow of the earth. But he seemed more amused than angry about the things he told them. Remus couldn't help but getting a feeling that he should know this man. Just from where? Then he caught a breeze from the stone circle and his sense of smell, being stronger than a normal wizard's thanks to his lycanthropy, caught a scent that he hadn't smelled in over a decade. That scent belonged to the lost cub. Harry. He was sure.

But before he could say anything, the man stood straight again and levitated a golden cup from the floor.

"I'm going to use this to claim the bounty on Voldemort's head. It would be nice if you could tell the old meddler that he doesn't have to send his martyr after the big bad one anymore, as I've taken care of things. You'll be able to read about the end of the chief Death Eater in the paper soon I suppose," Then he threw them a card, which landed standing on the tip stuck in the ground to their feet.

Sirius picked it up and when he stood again, the man had apparated away with the cup.

"Sirius, you're not going to believe me, but that man smelled exactly like Harry," Remus said shocked.

"What? Are you completely sure?" Sirius exclaimed.

"Yes. I would never forget the scent of either Adrian or Harry. I tried finding him by scent for years after all. I know that specific scent. Even if it isn't as innocent as the one he had as a baby anymore," Remus confirmed.

"I would expect that it wasn't," Sirius said strained, looking at the card that he held under the light of his wand.

The card was the famous signature of the assassin Gabriel.

"Oh shit," Remus commented, paling terribly.

"Oh shit is right. Damn it all. How could Harry, James and Lily's little boy that couldn't hurt anybody, become an assassin?" Sirius asked horrified.

"You remember what Dora said about the great entrance he gave at the Ministry, delivering twenty Death Eaters at once?" Remus asked.

"You mean having grown up in a horrible muggle orphanage and how Scrimgeour has sent a team into the muggle orphanages to look for magical children, as a direct answer to the claim?" Sirius asked.

"Yes. He claimed that, if he hadn't been left to the muggles and their less than stellar treatment, just because he was different, he wouldn't have taken to his profession. He also said he wasn't taught in this country. That implies him running away before the Hogwarts letter could arrive. This is all Dumbledore's fault. I'm sure that this was Harry. We both know, after much needling, that Dumbledore claimed that Harry was a squib and therefore sent him to grow up with muggles to spare him having to see how his brother Adrian would be celebrated and he couldn't even use magic. I have had several arguments with him about that, next to trying to get to see you to ask about how you could have betrayed James and Lily as Harry's godfather.

"I guess that something happened that night and Harry exhausted his magic. In a baby that could very well lead to readings of a very small magical core. You know that readings from babies aren't reliable at all, even if Dumbledore never wanted to hear that, calling it futile hope when I brought it up. Next to the fact that he hid where Adrian grew up, even if I had a right to know as his godfather. If the twins used some kind of twin magic, it could very well have happened that Harry, by helping Adrian, used up his available magic and therefore read as a squib," Remus explained his theory.

"This is such a huge mess. I wanted to search for Harry and ask him to come to at least stay in contact with us. To meet his brother and get to know him. To think that he has been killing people to earn money for years," Sirius said pained.

"At least he isn't hopelessly dark," Remus said, "And he has some morals. The ones he killed are the scum of this world. Normal people don't manage to get onto the list he gets paid to kill. And he refuses to harm children. Perhaps, if he got better options, he might turn away from being an assassin. And with the amnesty for those that accepted to hunt down the Death Eaters, he might even be willing to do so. He can't want for money after all he earned over the years, especially with the bounties on Death Eaters that he cashed in."

"Do you really think so?" Sirius asked, "I wish that you're right, but I simply don't know if I can hope that. We can't tell anybody about this. And we need to lock the secret with a safety net. If Dumbledore even thinks we could know something about Gabriel, he wouldn't refrain from using legilimency."

"Well, you are good at occlumency and legilimency doesn't work on werewolves. One of the few positive things about the curse," Remus commented.

Sirius nodded absentmindedly, still distraught about the revelation.

* * *

 **And that's it for now. Until next time.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Horcrux Trap**

Gabriel arrived at the Atrium of the Ministry with the cup of Hufflepuff still hovering in front of him. It was ten in the morning, he had slept a few hours before coming here and wore his normal outfit instead of the druid robe, and asked to get to see the Minister. Being known by now for his preferred appearance, he was escorted to the Minister's office by three aurors.

"You said you had another captive?" Scrimgeour asked without much fanfare.

"Indeed. If you would call one or two unspeakables here, it would be appreciated," Gabriel said, "I fear you won't believe me otherwise and I need confirmation to cash in the bounty for this capture."

Scrimgeour nodded, not having any reason to doubt the young assassin. He had simply delivered too many Death Eaters, in one way or another, to not do so when there was money involved. You could trust Gabriel to follow a job if there was enough money in for him. If you didn't try to cheat him, he was easy enough to deal with, in a disturbing kind of way.

"I suppose the golden cup has something to do with this?" Scrimgeour asked.

"Indeed. It's a container, but I'll explain more when your unspeakable is here. This needs a little bit of explanation and then I need the identity of the soul trapped inside this cup confirmed. And no, this isn't really my work. I'll explain it later," Gabriel answered calmly.

It took ten minutes for the unspeakable to arrive. Gabriel noticed that he immediately tensed when looking at the golden cup.

"I suppose can you feel the dark magic coming from it?" Gabriel asked.

"It's hard to not notice when you've studied magic for as long as I did," The unspeakable replied.

"Good, then this will be easier. To be blunt, this is the collection of all parts of Voldemort's soul. The cup once belonged to Helga Hufflepuff. Voldemort turned it into a horcrux, not knowing that it was an ancient trap for truly desperate dark wizards. I performed the ritual of Cernunnus to call all split parts of the soul back together. To clear a few things up, as far as I was informed, in this country most people that even know what a horcrux is believe that you have to destroy the anchor to get rid of the soul piece. That is nonsense," Gabriel stated firmly.

"But that is what was delivered from our ancestors," The unspeakable protested.

"Because the Ministry didn't tolerate any kind of magic than the one taught to the common witch or wizard for centuries. I wasn't taught in Great Britain, and I learned more about any kind of magic there is out there than you could ever imagine. Having the greatest masters of their subject teaching you, certainly surpasses the low level education that Hogwarts or even Beauxbatons can give their students. With how lacking the selection of teachers has been in core subjects at Hogwarts, it's no wonder that your so-called best magic school has dropped in ranks for decades," Gabriel replied harshly.

"And your Ministry has banned many books and practices about magic, because they declared it dark, mostly because they didn't understand it. The horcrux is such an example. It was developed in a time where dark wizards were much more common than these days. When Lady Morgana Le Fey stood against Lord Merlin Ambrosius, it wasn't as much a struggle of light against dark magic, it was a struggle for power over the land. Lord Merlin had decided that, to protect the interests of the common witch or wizard, they needed to have a protector among the non-magical rulers. Therefore, he chose young Arthur Pendragon to mentor and raise into the king that could take that role. Lady Morgana didn't believe that it was wise to allow a non-magical ruler to hold the fate of wizards in his hands and opposed Merlin at every turn.

"She was one of the main instigators to hide the island of Avalon from access to the general public. Only a rare few can gain that access and only if they have the raw magical talent. Avalon was tasked to keep the true knowledge of magic safe in case that the non-magicals turned against their magical brethren. It turned out to be a wise move. After the monumental clash of those two powerful magic users, and then their consecutive deaths, there was a vacuum in positions of power. Many an ambitious wizard tried stepping into their open positions, but they ultimately failed. But their methods became more and more brutal.

"They also resorted to more and more dark magic and the druids of the time noticed that it started to damage the environment. They knew that more than one of those wizards craved immortality, so they decided to take the worst ones out of the picture. They knew that there was a way to at least stall death, but it was a forbidden practice and the ultimate sacrilege to magic. Splitting your soul, therefore, if you could attach your soul to another item, you would have two anchors to this world. It isn't a true way of gaining immortality, it only allows your soul to remain at this plain of existence, even if your soul was normally forced to move on.

"It was known that the soul was sacrosanct to magic. Those that were willing to harm their soul in that unforgivable way were truly the worst of the worst wizards. The druids intentionally let the way to do it fall into the hands of a spy. The reason why they did it was simple. A soul isn't meant to be separated. It is meant to be whole. And if you have one part of a soul, you have the whole soul to call at your command," Gabriel explained.

"You mean that if one had one part of the soul, even if it was just the wizard itself or the horcrux, you could get the whole soul?" The unspeakable asked.

"Correct. And the druids kept that part of the knowledge hidden from the dark wizards. They waited for five years and then used a spell to detect any kind of soul containers that were placed somewhere within the borders of their home country. They sent out loyal warriors to collect the soul containers and called together all parts of the souls that were split forcefully by murdering an innocent. They performed the ritual of Cernunnus and soon had the souls of the worst dark wizards at their mercy. They normally drained the trapped souls of all magic and then let them pass on. It was the ultimate punishment for those fallen souls," Gabriel explained.

"Because they couldn't be reborn as magicals," the Unspeakable commented.

"Exactly. The druids believed in reincarnation of a soul and if you had a soul that died with its magic active, it would be reborn with it. But a soul without magic would also always return as a soul without magic. Any soul would be cleansed before rebirth and start anew, without the burdens of the previous life," Gabriel confirmed.

"So, I guess you want confirmation on the identity of the trapped souls before you use some spell to drain its magic away," The unspeakable deducted.

"Yes. We can simply add the magic to the wards of Hogwarts or something like that. Any kind of strong wards will do. And the nature of wards is that it doesn't matter if the magic was tainted or not. Magic is magic and it will be used for whatever intent the caster has," Gabriel stated.

The unspeakable nodded and performed a few tests.

"It certainly is You-Know-Who's soul trapped in this cup," He confirmed, looking in awe at the young assassin.

"That's fantastic. I'll have the bounty for Voldemort transferred to your vault, Gabriel. You have really done a great deed for our country with this," Scrimgeour declared happily.

Gabriel just nodded.

"We need to drain the magic as soon as possible. I guess with the leylines under the castle powering the wards normally, it would make sense to use Hogwarts. The question is if Professor Dumbledore will be very cooperative," Scrimgeour pondered.

"How would he justify not cooperating? And you don't need him to know just what magic you're exactly draining from the cup. And if you time things well, he won't even be there," Gabriel commented.

The others nodded.

"I suppose we shouldn't waste any time. We can take the floo to Hogwarts and get going," Scrimgeour said, wanting to get rid of Voldemort as soon as he could.

The others agreed and Gabriel wondered how the old man, if he was there, would react to his presence. He really didn't like him.

* * *

At Hogwarts there was a meeting of the Order of the Phoenix, which was told that Dumbledore didn't have to live much longer and who was going to lead their operations in the future. Dumbledore insisted that Adrian Potter was needed to defeat Voldemort because of the prophecy. But as he was only going to start his last year at school, he wouldn't be in a leading position in the Order yet. The assembled group was surprised to hear the floo activate in the headmaster's office and to their added shock the Minister himself an unspeakable and a young black-haired man stepped out.

The two most baffled by the last person were Sirius Black and Remus Lupin. They had trouble not greeting the youth as Hadrian (Harry) Potter. They knew that he wouldn't appreciate it.

"Minister, what do we owe this honour? And what is he doing here?" McGonagall asked, pointing at Gabriel.

"Gabriel is here on my personal invitation, as he has done a great service to our country that will soon end this war. Albus, I need access to the ward stone of Hogwarts to let it drain a powerful magical artefact of all magic in it. The only wards that I knew that could take the amount of magic that we speak of are the ones at Hogwarts, that's why we came here instead of doing it at the Ministry," Scrimgeour informed the headmaster.

The Order members looked over the youth that had been identified as Gabriel with interest and some open distrust and in case of Severus Snape, loathing. The only place where he could stay without getting captured on the spot was Hogwarts, and not in a teaching position. Assassins like Gabriel would take him out immediately and he didn't like that a person like Gabriel would easily take him out. It was even more embarrassing that the assassin was the same age as the students that he normally easily cowed with his glares and snarky comments. But here he was, easily meeting his hateful glare without a care in the world.

"Can you tell us where Hermione is?" Adrian asked hopefully, ignoring the harsh looks he got from others.

"I freed her from Lestrange Manor and handed her over to her grandfather, as was agreed with him when he hired me, thinking that something had happened to her, going by her letters. I don't know where they live now, but I gave him a few contacts to help her deal with emotional trauma," Gabriel answered calmly.

Many looked at him surprised that he would have done something like that.

"Why did you kill the girl that impersonated her here at Hogwarts?" Dumbledore demanded to know.

"Simply because smuggling her out would have been too much of a risk. I only needed information from her. Nothing more. And she was too careful to leave an opening whenever she was outside of the school. I observed her for two weeks before I acted and sneaked into the school," Gabriel answered.

"But you could have handed her over to the aurors, you didn't have to kill her," Dumbledore insisted.

"It's what I was paid for. And honestly, with how easily Death Eaters got away before Minister Scrimgeour made them outlaws and called the professionals in, as, after his auror office and the DMLE in general had been cut off from any reasonable funding, a spy inside the Ministry would have freed her within hours of being arrested and nothing would have been won. You were losing this war because you let your enemies walk all over you, just because your ideas of dark and light are completely screwed up. It isn't light to sacrifice a whole nation, only to give those that kill innocents without remorse a chance to perhaps redeem themselves. That's actually pretty dark," Gabriel bluntly told Dumbledore.

Protests rang against his assessment. Gabriel ignored them.

"Can we get this done? I would like to go home sometime soon," Gabriel addressed Scrimgeour.

"Yes, we still have lots of work to do," Scrimgeour nodded, "Albus, please lead us to the ward stone."

"May I ask what it is you're going to drain, Rufus?" Dumbledore asked.

"You may watch, but if you interfere, I'll have Gabriel and Unspeakable Drake detain you," Scrimgeour said firmly.

"You know that I'm not on the Ministry's payroll except for the bounties?" Gabriel asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I still think you'd do it to simply get this finished," Scrimgeour countered.

"Guess you're right, just this once. But don't think I'd always listen to your orders," Gabriel said and the group finally started walking towards the ward room.

Dumbledore thought hard about how he could find out more about this, but the object in question was hidden under a piece of cloth. He opened the room and then explained that the item needed to be in contact with the platform over the ward stone to be drained. He didn't like the look that Gabriel gave the ward stone. He didn't want the assassin to have too much knowledge about his school. Still, he activated the absorbing function and stepped aside.

"You can now place it on the platform," Dumbledore told Scrimgeour, who waved Gabriel forward.

Gabriel placed the item on the platform and levitated the cloth away. Dumbledore and Adrian recognised the cup of Hufflepuff.

"No, you have to stop!" Dumbledore protested.

"No, you have to stop thinking that you know everything better than others," Gabriel coldly told the old man, "I know exactly what that is and the Minister and Unspeakable Drake do as well. This is the one way to get rid of Voldemort. I've done the job you should have done years ago."

"But you can't. The prophecy," Dumbledore stammered.

"A prophecy only comes true if you help it along or it is self-fulfilling anyway," Drake commented.

"I have no idea which prophecy you're talking about, old man, but I don't believe in fate. We make our own fate with our actions," Gabriel stated coldly.

Gabriel solved the problem by simply creating a barrier between the platform and the headmaster, shocking many at his casual use of wandless magic.

"Now nobody will get to the cup until all of Voldemort's magic has been added to the wards of Hogwarts. Ironic, the self-proclaimed heir of Slytherin will contribute to the school he sought to rule. I think that's a fitting end," Gabriel commented.

"But you have to destroy them all," Adrian spoke up, "I mean, I agree with taking the magic from that thing and adding it to the wards, but that wouldn't destroy the soul piece in there, would it?"

Gabriel looked at his twin brother. His question was actually a smart one.

"The soul will end with a one-way ticket through the veil of death. That's the method that was set up by the druids that came up with the trap for the worst dark wizards. If your country wouldn't condemn so much magic, you would have known that. It's common knowledge with everybody that studied higher levels of magic in any other country. Had you just asked a curse breaker that wasn't taught in Britain, he would have been able to easily tell you how to deal with horcruxes," Gabriel said.

Many eyes turned to Bill Weasley.

"Wait, you mean to tell me that we only had to find one of the horcruxes, call the other pieces together, using it as a focal point, and be done with You-Know-Who?" Bill asked aghast.

"It's really well-known?" Adrian asked, looking at the older man.

"Of course, horcruxes are a joke in curse-breaker circles. No halfway intelligent wizard would ever split his soul, especially as it is known how to easily destroy said wizard if he does. It's part of what I learned in the first six months of my training in Egypt. The first ones to make them were after all the Egyptian pharaohs. And shortly after it became known, their opponents came up with a way to counter it. You said the druids used it as a trap?" Bill asked Gabriel, while Adrian glared at Dumbledore, who looked really pale now.

"Yes, after Lady Morgana and Lord Merlin left a vacuum of power behind, many dark wizards tried to step up to rule the people. The druids had enough and devised a trap for those that held no reservations of how far to go. They let the knowledge of horcruxes slip as a secret way to gain immortality. Of course they kept secret that they didn't work as hoped and that there was a ritual to easily dispose of the wizard that made a horcrux. It cleaned up a lot of dark wizards and boosted the druids' reputation in magical circles of that time," Gabriel basically repeated what he had already told the Minister.

"So you mean to tell me, had Dumbledore just asked others for help, we would have got rid of Voldemort way earlier?" Adrian grit out, thinking about the people that had died at the hands of the monster ever since he had returned.

"I could have easily told him what he needed to know and I have even performed the ritual that I mentioned twice already during my work," Bill confirmed.

Most of the Order now glared at Dumbledore.

"All that crap about my destiny, that you sent my brother away because he would be jealous of my fame, as it clearly turned out that he isn't a squib, just because you couldn't fucking ask for help?" Adrian yelled at Dumbledore.

Gabriel kept an even face. He hadn't known that Adrian knew about him. And that he was angry about their separation. He would have to keep an eye on him. It was entertaining to see the great Albus Dumbledore be laid into by his supposed golden boy though. And the titbit about Dumbledore being the reason for his stay at the orphanage was also interesting. If he wasn't already condemned to death, going by how his hand looked and how the magic felt, decaying that was, he would have acted. But even he could hardly find a more fitting way of death for the man. It would be painful and not end quickly.

"You said I gave you the proof for Voldemort's use of horcruxes in my second year, the diary that had possessed Ginny. Why didn't you ask back then?" Adrian demanded to know.

"It was too risky. If that information got into the wrong hands," Dumbledore tried justifying himself.

"Only idiots would use that way. And it doesn't matter if they know that to make one you have to kill an innocent. And face it, those that even consider doing it, are those that were already lost before that point in time. That's the reason why the trap was set up in the way it was. Any normal dark wizard, no matter how powerful, wouldn't be too much of a problem to take out otherwise. I mean, let's take Gellert Grindelwald as an example. Extremely powerful, charming, resourceful, but once he showed his true face, it would have only taken a consolidated effort to bring him down, given that you had one or two wizards of similar power level at your disposal. And if you look around in the world, you'll always find somebody matching those criteria," Gabriel mentioned.

"So, you'd say your soul wasn't tainted by all your murders?" Dumbledore snapped at him.

"I never said that I was an innocent. I'm far from it. I'm basically an angel of death. An angel of judgement. But I can say with certainty that my soul isn't black. I don't need to use the dark arts. And if you actually looked at the list of my victims, you'd find them the scum of humanity. Both muggle and magical. Who do you think pays most for my services? Governments that are desperate to have somebody deal with a problem they can't keep under control anymore. And nobody would put as large a bounty on the head of a good person. It's more probable that somebody would pay large salaries to have somebody like that protected. And if that person wasn't capable of protecting himself, the underworld normally wouldn't even take notice. Sure, there are exceptions, but normally the ones that would put a large bounty on a good person, are those that have to fear my visits themselves," Gabriel easily stated.

The Order didn't know how to react to that. What he said was somewhat logical. Even if it made them queasy.

It took half an hour to drain all the magic from the cup. Then the ward stone stopped glowing and returned to its normal form.

"Well, that's done. Now the cup only has to go through the veil of death and you're done with Voldemort," Gabriel said, "Minister, I expect the payment within the next two days."

"Certainly. Would you consider working as an auror for us? There is the complete pardon that I offered the assassins and bounty hunters that took the task after all," Scrimgeour asked.

"No, I don't like being forced to follow orders. And I dislike it even more to be bound by a government when they always tend to fall to corruption so easily. I have other options that will be open to me in the future. And honestly, I guess I wouldn't need to work a single day in my life again, but that's actually too boring for me. I take my leave," Gabriel said, only to be handed a small piece of paper from Sirius Black when he left the room, nobody wanting to anger him, knowing his reputation.

He wondered what this was about, but he would read whatever note Black wanted to have him when he was in a safe place. The wards were humming with power and he had discreetly placed some spells that would interweave the wards in the way they should be. It wouldn't do to have the children here an easy target come September.

* * *

 **And cut. Until next time.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Hello everybody, here is the last chapter for Gabriel. Thank you everybody that favoured this story and wrote reviews. As it was the first time I took on a darker Harry Potter story I'm especially happy about the great turnout. Happy reading.**

* * *

 **Epilogue**

Gabriel sat in his safe house and read the note for the third time. How could that have happened? He had always made sure to not be recognised. And now Black and Lupin knew his birth name. He didn't really think it a problem when he threw his card at them at the stone circle. But to think that Lupin had recognised his scent from back when he was a baby. They knew that he was Hadrian Potter. That could pose a problem, but so far they hadn't acted on their knowledge. Dumbledore clearly didn't know. Not that the old man would pose any problem in the future. He had heard that he was forced to stay in his bed full-time now, as the curse was killing him.

But the knowledge that Lupin could track him by scent was worrisome. He would have to stay away if he wanted to keep his other identities a secret as well. But they offered to meet him, talk to him about his parents, the people they had been. No binding commitments. He pondered if he should take them up on the offer. He had always wondered about his parents. Which orphan didn't do? Had they abandoned him or had they died? Normal questions.

He could turn his back to his past. He hadn't had it before. He didn't depend on being Hadrian, or as most called him among his parents' friends, Harry, Potter. He was the assassin Gabriel. He was feared and respected by anybody that heard his name. He also knew that the naming of children had taken a drastic turn. Very few boys were named Gabriel currently. At least in the magical world. He had by now billions of galleons and other currencies stored away at different banks all over the world. He wouldn't suffer poverty any time soon. He could install himself as an upcoming business man or continue playing rich heir.

There were lots of options. He could also work with the masteries that he had. It was fun to baffle the established Potions masters with recipes for potions that they had never even heard about or to present greatly improved versions of known potions. He could also revolutionise the knowledge about runes. He knew at least three alphabets that had been lost to time. If he used that to create devices that had been thought impossible to be created, he could even explain his wealth away. Hell, he could probably simply sit some mastery exams in any country and get more masteries, simply because he had learned so many different branches of magic under Master Kwan.

The question was, when should Gabriel retire? Someday it would have to happen. Well, for now he could earn even more gold by catching the last remaining Death Eaters. And perhaps he could have some more fun with the clean-up in Britain. He would see how much money was in his accounts everywhere before he made the decision what to do in the future. His master had once said when Gabriel had asked him when he had known that it was time to retire that he had felt that it was enough. When he had had enough money to live at the level he thought he deserved for the rest of his life, without having to fear losing it if he was reasonable.

Gabriel knew that he probably already had that amount of money. But it didn't feel right yet.

* * *

It took Gabriel two more months to end his involvement in the round up of Death Eaters in Britain. He decided that a long vacation somewhere in the sun was a good idea. He searched through the internet to look for some of the most beautiful places on earth. He wanted to feel at peace. After a long and bloody job like the one in Britain he needed to centre himself again to be able to continue. It was a common mistake to think that assassins could kill without remorse. It was always there. But the best ones were taught to deal with it in different ways.

Getting away from the job regularly was one part of it. Gabriel was as good as he was, as he accepted all parts of his character. The dark parts as well as the light ones. He took care to put the ones he had killed to rest in his mind before taking up a new job. Being influenced by a previous job could mess you up completely and that was something he couldn't afford, or he would die on a job. His opponents were the worst kind of scum and they always had guards, wards, often guard dogs and other protections around their places. If you weren't ready for anything and had a clear mind, you died. It was that simple. Many assassins, some of them famous and with a feared reputation, had died in incidents like that.

It was one thing Master Kwan had trained into Gabriel early on. You had to take care of yourself, both physically as well as emotionally. And if you felt you couldn't continue being an assassin for a while, you went to the ground and took time to recover. Or you quit. Some assassins that had reached that point and realised it, had simply used their impressive abilities in other ways. One had decided that he found peace around animals and had set up a foundation that modernised existing zoos and set up new ones all over the world. Or sponsored sanctuaries. There were many options. Another wanted to prevent that more children went his way and started scholarships for orphans in Africa.

Gabriel knew lots of stories like those. And it helped doing the job, knowing that in the end, if you survived until that point, you could find a niche for yourself. Of course there were others, bad examples, that became addicted to killing. Often they had to be taken out by other assassins, because they weren't controllable anymore. Any assassin could be controlled if you knew how to handle him. And controlling meant that you could easily prevent him going on a killing spree.

Gabriel would wait and see how it would go for him. Right now, he was still young. He could look into what he wanted to do later in his life, after he got sick of his current job. He could, if he cared for it, get to know his brother and the remaining friends of his parents. And Sirius Black and Remus Lupin already had found out about his secret and not told others. Well, he would have to keep an eye on them in some way. No matter what, right now the assassin Gabriel would be unavailable for any job for at least half a year. He had more than earned that long vacation.

* * *

Just when Gabriel had decided that the Maldives were the place to go for his vacation, a letter appeared in front of him from thin air. He took it immediately, as he recognised the crest on the letter. It was the crest of his old school. Any alumnus would react to a call from the school. He broke the wax seal and took the letter out. It was a recall to the school, as the headmaster needed to talk to him. He sighed, his vacation would have to be pushed back a little. Well, perhaps he could start his vacation there before he continued on the Maldives and lying on a white sandy beach with a deep blue ocean.

Gabriel appeared at the entrance hall of his former school through the portal that connected the school with the distant main land. The school was placed on copied space of a large island. He was greeted by the waiting headmaster.

"Welcome, Gabriel, or do you prefer your birth name, Hadrian?" The headmaster asked mildly.

"I should have known that you would find out, headmaster. I could never keep any secrets from you. No matter how good my occlumency became," Gabriel replied, "I think it would be alright if you called me Hadrian or Harry, except if you called me back for a job."

The headmaster chuckled and shook his head. He had short grey hair and a well-trimmed grey moustache. He didn't look any day older than fifty, but Gabriel knew that he was over six hundred years old already. The island's powerful magic kept him young and agile.

"No, no, Hadrian, it's nothing like that. I don't need somebody of your skills to deal with a problem. I'm well capable of doing it myself, should the need ever arrive. Not that many people would try to anger me enough to cause that reaction. It's truly amusing how easily you can fool people into believing the most absurd kinds of things. Really, a stone to make an elixir that gives you eternal life?" He chuckled.

"Well, Headmaster Flamel, they would hardly believe that you and your wife have Elvin heritage and therefore age much slower than the average witch or wizard. Everybody only remembers the house elves and they have more or less forgotten about the true elves that once walked on earth," Gabriel replied.

"And it is a true shame. I'm just glad that I was allowed to attend Avalon Academy where the true magical knowledge is kept alive. It's an honour to have been chosen to preserve this haven of magic. And I can't really imagine a greater career than being a teacher to those that appreciate the magic and want to really know what it includes and what you can do with it. Contrary to the closed-minded fools in certain countries," Nicholas Flamel scoffed.

Gabriel smiled. He had always liked his headmaster, even if he couldn't follow the path that the old man had hoped him to follow. Gabriel didn't have the peace in his soul that was needed to become a White Knight. The special forces that protected the magical world from truly evil threats. Never going as far as killing your opponents, but making really sure that they would never be a threat again. It had been the dream of most students to be allowed to join them. Gabriel had been offered a place, but he knew that he wouldn't be happy with them. He decided to go into the shadows, as he didn't feel right in the light.

Gabriel knew that he had been the most talented and powerful student to go through Avalon Academy in over two hundred years. But contrary to what other people would have done, Headmaster Flamel could accept that the damage done to him in his early childhood, before Avalon Academy found him at that orphanage at the age of eight, had been too deep to really heal. The academy had surely managed to lessen the darkness in Gabriel, but it hadn't been able to take it away.

"Why did you call me here, headmaster?" Gabriel asked, "I was just about to go on vacation."

"I suppose you more than earned that vacation, Hadrian. While we didn't interfere, because honestly, if Albus the fool had just acted earlier and not tried to follow ridiculous ideas of what's light and dark, the whole 'war' against Tom Riddle and his followers would have been over in at most a year, we did watch closely. At the beginning it was just a small group that used terror and guerrilla tactics to shake up people. But if the Ministry and Albus had simply acted, made those that belonged to the Death Eaters known as criminals, not a deluded political movement, few would have followed the call of Riddle. And Albus knew who was behind it early on.

"I'm actually really proud of how you handled the situation, Hadrian. While I don't like that you killed all your captives in one way or the other, I can acknowledge that they were too far gone to be trusted to stay alive. And the veil of death is a more merciful sentence than rotting away at Azkaban. The end result is the same in nearly all cases anyway. I suppose you are done with being Europe's most notorious assassin for a while?" Flamel asked.

"Yes, I first need to clear my mind of what I did and that will probably take half a year. There were so many," Gabriel admitted, "And with the revelations of my birth name, there are a lot of things I need to meditate over."

Flamel just nodded. He was old enough to have seen all sides of humanity and the young man in front of him had always been intriguing. Choosing the Angel of Judgement to be your patron was rare, but it suited him.

"I called you, because I wanted to talk to you about your newly discovered heritage. I wasn't sure if you were part of one of Albus idiotic plans or not, but I knew that you needed help. That's why we prevented that you ever got discovered by Hogwarts. The world is constantly changing and I can attest to that better than most. Still, there always have to be people that look out that a certain balance is kept. And if people fail, magic will step up to solve the problems before the magical races are in true danger of being extinct. In Europe there was a large concentration of dark magic that was focused in the Dark Lords Gellert Grindelwald and Tom Riddle.

"Grindelwald was in a way the bigger threat, as he knew what he did and how to gain control over large parts of Europe. But still, he knew that he couldn't kill off magical blood, as it would upset the balance. Gellert had enough druidic heritage to know that much. He didn't have their connection to earth magic, but he knew their rituals and could control elemental spells much better than most people ever will be able to do. He didn't hate a certain group of people, he just considered non-magicals to be lower beings and decided that it was the natural right of wizards and witches to rule over them. He had a much lower personal killing count than Riddle, but he ruined many more lives with his way to conquer the world.

"Nurmengard was the place where he put his magical opponents. The one thing Grindelwald did was planting some ideas into the head of a young muggle, Adolph Hitler, who already held a hatred against the Jews and certain other groups. He only gave the man a small push how to get started and then he let him follow his fanatics, which did the job of distracting the muggles from what Grindelwald did right under their noses. He used their war as justification for all his opinions and many believed them, as they seemed to be proven true with how the muggles killed each other mercilessly. The White Knights were in the end involved in bringing him down, as the one with equal magical potential, Albus Dumbledore, was simply dragging his feet far too long and we needed to prevent that things went out of control.

"The second Dark Lord could have been prevented. I doubt that he would ever have turned into a good person, but he could have found a way to not want to kill all muggles and those related to them, had somebody only really cared for what happened to him. As you know, his story is very similar to your own, Hadrian. Raised in a muggle orphanage, bullied by the other children until he found out how to get back at them, powerful in his magic and intelligent. The difference was that with you, we took care of getting you away from the muggles and found ways for you to stay until you finished your studies. Still, had we failed, you would have outdone both Dark Lords in your raging against the world that wronged you.

"You have managed to find the balance that is needed to work between the traditional sides in conflicts, dark and light. You are in the grey, where things aren't absolute. While I would have loved for you to find happiness with the White Knights, I have realised that your destiny is a different one. Hadrian Potter, you have awoken the powers of a being that has been slumbering for over a thousand years. You, my student, have been awoken as a twilight walker. I know that the Potter line was long rumoured to have some kind of special bloodline, but now it is clear that it is more a peculiarity of acting to growing up under difficult circumstances. Potters that awake that peculiarity will always grow beyond their normal potential and become more than their peers. It could go into three directions, light dark or grey. Most drift into light or dark, becoming powerful champions for either side. In fact, the last true twilight walker to walk on earth has lived around the time of Lady Morgana and Lord Merlin.

"You'll find more and more powers coming to you. Some strange and hard to control. I advise you to take your time to properly learn how to control them. You may access our academy's library, as I doubt you would find any documentation on this special kind of person anywhere else in the world. I don't know if your brother would also show some signs of the heritage, as it needs a special kind of mind to awaken the powers. But you need to be warned. Twilight walkers have always stood between the extremes and have been keepers of the balance. And as much as you would deny doing so intentionally, your choice in targets and refusal to kill children, actually is part of your heritage," Flamel revealed to Gabriel.

"I see. I'll gratefully accept your offer to use the library. But after my vacation I think. I'll come back if something happens that pushes me to come earlier, but I don't think so," Gabriel replied.

Flamel chuckled.

"Certainly. Just know that our gates will always be open for you, Hadrian. Oh, and one other thing, as I know that the problem has been troubling you for a while. Each keeper of balance in history, be they twilight walkers of simply chosen ones, has been given a true soul mate to fulfil their destiny. They don't always meet them early in their lives, but they will meet and realise that they belong together. When it happens, you will know. Trust your instincts, they won't lead you astray," Flamel informed Gabriel.

"Thank you, that's actually truly assuring," Gabriel replied smiling a little.

"Well, then I can just wish you fun and that you manage to regain your personal balance," Flamel said.

"Thank you, headmaster, until next time," Gabriel accepted and left the man.

* * *

The Maldives were truly a wonderful place to clean your soul from a long job of a darker nature. He had rented a villa for himself for two months. He planned to travel to another country after this, simply doing some sight-seeing. He had wanted to see a few places that Master Kwan had described to him during his training and he especially wanted to see Japan. Kyoto and Osaka were said to be especially beautiful at certain times of the year and he planned to see them. Then the beaches of Izu or the snowy mountains in Hokkaido. Africa would also be part of his travels, going onto a photo safari had been a dream of his when he had been a young child. And now he had the time, the money and the determination to do all of this. The first two months would be dedicated to dealing with his actions during the job in Great Britain. Then he would let his soul heal from seeing all the beautiful parts that the world had to offer. Maybe he would even offer Black and Lupin to come visit him while he was in Africa. He didn't have property there, so nothing could be used to be tied to him.

And what headmaster Flamel had told him, well, he could live with being a keeper of balance in the world. He was realist enough to know that there needed to be somebody that took care that things didn't get out of control. Somebody that wasn't limited to the ways or police forces or would go too far. Twilight walker, well, it certainly had a nice ring to it. For the time being Gabriel would be this keeper of balance, taking out the truly evil guys, while protecting the innocents, though mainly he considered children innocents. Adults rarely were. It was simply a fact of life. And adults had the choice to learn defending themselves against normal threats quite well.

And once he felt that he had done enough as Gabriel, well, he could continue being a keeper of balance without resorting to his current main job. He had the education to work the system from behind the scenes. Perhaps it would be a funny idea to set up a foundation in his name. Gabriel Foundation, oh man would some people choke when they heard it. A foundation that used some of his money earned with a bloody job to look after orphans all over the world. Yes, he would certainly keep that idea in mind.

* * *

 **I know that this leaves some threads open, but I decided that I didn't want to write a reunion at this point in time. Gabriel doesn't have any true connections to his family and their friends. Therefore, I left it as an option to happen in the future. And I don't really plan a sequel to this. Till the next story.**


End file.
